Antivascular Endothelial Growth Factor Agents for Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Ophthalmology Volume 2012, Article ID 319728, 12 pages doi:10.1155/2012/319728 Review Article Antivascular Endothelial Growth Factor Agents for Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration Ilias Zampros, Anna Praidou, Periklis Brazitikos, Panagiotis Ekonomidis, and Sofia Androudi Department of Ophthalmology, Aristotle University, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece Correspondence should be addressed to Sofia Androudi, androudi@otenet.gr Received 7 August 2011; Accepted 30 September 2011 Academic Editor: Toshiaki Kubota Copyright © 2012 Ilias Zampros et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe visual loss and blindness over the age of 50 in developed countries. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is considered as a critical molecule in the pathogenesis of choroidal neovascularization (CNV), which characterizes the neovascular AMD. Anti-VEGF agents are considered the most promising way of effectively inhibition of the neovascular AMD process. VEGF is a heparin-binding glycoprotein with potent angiogenic, mitogenic and vascular permeability-enhancing activities specific for endothelial cells. Two anti-VEGF agents have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of neovascular AMD. Pegaptanib sodium, which is an aptamer and ranibizumab, which is a monoclonal antibody fragment. Another humanized monoclonal antibody is currently off-label used, bevacizumab. This paper aims to discuss in details the effectiveness, the efficacy and safety of th