On Aug. 10. 2012, Genentech announced that Lucentis (ranibizumab injection) was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treatment of diabetic macular edema (DME), an eye condition in people with diabetes that causes blurred vision, severe vision loss and sometimes blindness.

Lucentis 0.5 mg once monthly was first approved by the FDA for treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in 2006 and for macular edema following retinal vein occlusion (RVO) in 2010.

Today, Lucentis is only FDA-approved medicine shown to rapidly and significantly improve vision loss from DME and is the first major treatment advancement for the disease in more than 25 years. More patients who received Lucentis 0.3mg were able to read at least three additional lines (15 letters) on the eye chart after 24 months of treatment: