Kodiak Sciences said its two experimental eye drugs succeeded in a Phase 3 trial against Regeneron's Eylea, sending shares up more than 100% and adding over $3 billion to the company's market value. The drugs, Zenkuda and tabirafusp alfa tedromer, were tested in patients with wet age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss in older adults.
Both drugs met the trial's main goal of non-inferiority, meaning they matched Eylea's ability to improve vision and reduce retinal fluid. Zenkuda patients gained 7.2 letters on a standard eye test, compared with 7.6 for Eylea. The bigger difference was durability: using an individualized dosing tool, 54% of Zenkuda patients went six months between injections, while Eylea is typically given every eight weeks. Tabirafusp also matched Eylea on efficacy and had similar rates of adverse events.
The results mark a turnaround for Kodiak, whose earlier attempt with Zenkuda failed to beat Eylea more than four years ago. The company said that failure was tied to patients who needed more frequent dosing, and the new trial used a fluid-monitoring tool to better tailor injection timing. Kodiak expects to ask the FDA to approve Zenkuda for wet AMD and two other eye disorders in the fourth quarter of 2026, with tabirafusp-ted to follow late next year.
The broader context is the growing burden of repeated eye injections for age-related retinal disease. Newer drugs such as high-dose Eylea and Roche's Vabysmo can extend intervals to 16–20 weeks, but Kodiak argues those drugs have fallen short of their durability claims in real-world use. The new data suggest a next generation of treatments may be able to push dosing intervals even further, though the results will still need regulatory scrutiny. The source article notes no independent verification of Kodiak's claims beyond the company's announcement. (Note: This is a single-source report; no differing sources to compare.)