Bioshares latest edition listed its 6 top picks for 2017. Opthea...

Bioshares latest edition listed its 6 top picks for 2017.
Opthea was one of them as it was last year. They have arrived at similar conclusions to those outlined by TitusPullo. A brief summary of these conclusions follows: Investors received an early Christmas present when news broke on the failure of Ophthotech Corporation's Fovista in two Phase III trials. The result for Opthea is that it shifts its wet AMD candidate OPT 302 further towards a front row position for new approaches for treating wet AMD. Fovista targets PGDF, a growth factor that is involved in cell migration and blood vessel growth. Fovista is a pegylated aptamer, a single stranded oligo-nucleotide that in theory can bind with high specificity and affinity to its target. One conclusion from the trail failure is that PGDF is not a viable target in diseases with a vascular component. Opthea's clinical program has seen OPT 302 move this year from Phase Ib and into a Phase IIa trial, with results expected in 2017 Q1. Positive results can be expected to cause a rerating of the stock.
Two VEGF-A drugs, Lucentis and Eylea, last year generated sales of over US$7 billion and this excludes the 60% of the market from off-label use of the drug Avastin. However, 50% of patients receiving VEGF-A inhibitors do not achieve significant vision gain, which means an opportunity exists for a combination therapy which could meet that need e.g. OPT302 combined with Lucentis, or indeed an entirely new and yet to be developed approach.