Abstract
Purpose:
To evaluate the efficacy and safety of SYL1001, a short interfering (si) RNA targeting the transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 (TRPV1), for the treatment of dry eye disease (DED).
Methods:
This study combines a phase I and two phase II clinical trials to test different doses of SYL1001 in a total of 156 healthy subjects and patients with DED. After 10 days of treatment, the primary efficacy endpoints were the effect on (1) the scoring in the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) questionnaires, and (2) ocular tolerance evaluated by corneal fluorescein staining and conjunctival hyperemia. Secondary endpoints included the assessment of systemic and local tolerance.
Results:
Topical administration of SYL1001 1.125% once daily produced a significant decrease in VAS scores compared with placebo from day 4 until the end of treatment (change from baseline at day 10: −1.73 ± 0.32 vs. −0.91 ± 0.34; P = 0.013). For all treatments, OSDI scores were significantly reduced compared to their respective baseline values (P < 0.01), although no significant changes were detected between groups. Conjunctival hyperemia (quantified as normal or abnormal) significantly improved after instillation of SYL1001 1.125% compared with placebo (50% vs. 20%; P < 0.05). Excellent tolerability was reported, with no differences in the rates of occurrence of adverse events between groups.
Conclusion:
These trials achieved their primary endpoints of identifying the most effective dose of SYL1001 (1.125%). SYL1001 showed a large safety margin and may provide novel therapeutic opportunity for the relief of dry eye. (ClinicalTrials.gov numbers, NCT01438281, NCT01776658, and NCT02455999.)
Dry eye is a common and multifactorial disease characterized by a disruption of the tear film and concurrent ocular surface damage.
1 The leading causes of dry eye disease (DED) include dysfunction of meibomian glands, a decrease in mucin production, chronic blepharitis, refractive surgery, and environmental conditions. Associated symptoms often refers to redness, irritation, itching, and burning eyes, resulting in eye discomfort and pain in most severe cases. Although no uniform diagnostic criteria have yet been established, an estimated 300 million people worldwide are thought to suffer from DED.
2 Very few therapeutic options are currently available to these patients. The first line treatment involves the use of ocular artificial tear substitutes, gels, and ointments, followed by the application of anti-inflammatory agents, and ultimately instillation of serum or umbilical cord serum eye drops.
3 Overall, these agents showed low efficacy in the treatment of DED and the relief of related symptoms, mainly in patients with moderate to severe disorder. Restasis (Allergan, Inc., Irvine, CA, USA) in the United States and Ikervis (Santen, St. Albans, UK) in Europe, are two cyclosporine ophthalmic emulsions approved for the management of chronic dry eye caused by inflammation. Very recently, Xiidra (lifitegrast; Shire, Lexington, MA, USA), an integrin antagonist, has also been approved in the United States for the relief of signs and symptoms of dry eye. However, uncertainty remains about the relative efficacy of these agents compared with placebo. In addition, they have been associated with distinct side effects such as instillation pain and irritation.
4,5
Sylentis is developing SYL1001, a novel chemically synthesized 19-base pair small interfering oligonucleotide RNA (siRNA), for the specific inhibition of the transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 (TRPV1). The RNA interference (RNAi) technology allows for selective degradation of mRNA and silencing of protein coding genes: this mechanism produces transient silencing lasting for a prolonged period of time, thus providing a valuable tool for the development of new treatment strategies.
6 Indeed, RNAi compounds represent a fast growing class of new pharmaceutical drugs that target disease-related genes. In addition to providing higher specificity than small molecule inhibitors, they can also interfere with the production of proteins not accessible to monoclonal antibodies.
7 Several RNAi compounds have already reached advanced phases of clinical trials in various diseases, including ophthalmic affectations such as glaucoma and macular edema.
8
A particular complication of DED consists in the appearance of corneal epithelial damage, which in turn stimulates the nerve endings in the cornea to produce eye discomfort.
9 TRPV1, also known as the capsaicin receptor, is a nociceptive transducer involved in the sensing and transmission of pain stimuli.
10 Interestingly, it has also been shown to participate in the modulation of inflammatory response.
11,12 TRPV1 is found expressed in various eye tissues including the corneal epithelium and the basal layer of the conjunctiva, hence representing an important mediator of ocular pain signal.
12 The current study describes the results obtained in phase I and II clinical studies, which aim to determine the safety and efficacy of SYL1001, a topically administered siRNA targeting TRPV1 expression on the ocular surface.
For clinical trial data, normal limits were assessed using Shapiro-Wilk test. All analyses of the continuous efficacy variables within each group (before and after treatment) were performed by 1-sample t-Test (or Wilcoxon signed-rank test in case of not normally distributed data). Differences among groups were evaluated by repeated measurements ANOVA, with the treatment group adjusting for others factors (eye and time). Treatment groups were tested at the two-sided 5% significance level. Corneal fluorescein staining and hyperemia were categorized as improvement, worsening, and maintenance from initial to day 10 visit and summarized by treatment group. Categorical safety endpoints were analyzed using the χ2 test (or log-likelihood ratio test) and continuous variables using an ANOVA analysis (or Kruskal-Wallis test as appropriate). The right eye was selected for the analyses in the phase II studies. For VAS evaluation, results obtained from day 1 to day 10 prior to administration (corresponding to 0–9 instillations) were used. The SAS software Version 9.3 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC, USA) was used for all statistical analyses.
The current study demonstrates that topical SYL1001, a new siRNA compound targeting TRPV1, can reduce ocular pain and conjunctival hyperemia in patients with DED. Moreover, SYL1001 was found to have an excellent safety and tolerability profile at all tested doses (0.375%, 0.75%, 1.125%, and 2.25%).
In the phase I clinical trial, no treatment-related changes were detected in all of the ocular safety parameters. Moreover, serum levels of SYL1001 in treated volunteers were always below detection limit, consistent with the rapid degradation of siRNAs by serum ribonucleases; this represents a major advantage for a locally administered compound as it avoids any possible systemic toxicity. In the phase II trials, all reported AEs were of mild intensity, and no differences in AEs occurrence were observed between treatment and placebo groups. These safety results are in line well with those previously obtained by our group in nonclinical safety studies, as well as in trials using siRNA in ophthalmic solutions.
13 Taken together, these observations indicate excellent safety and local tolerability for SYL1001.
The phase II trials also met their primary efficacy endpoints. Hence, these studies demonstrate that SYL1001 1.125% significantly reduced ocular pain scores, as measured by VAS, from day 4 to the end of treatment compared with placebo. The delay in reaching a statistically significant reduction probably results from the long half-life of the receptor. Of note, the fact that intermediate doses of SYL1001 produced greater effect than higher doses is consistent with the mechanism of action of siRNA. The adequate dose to be administered remains a most challenging problem in RNAi technology: the siRNA must efficiently enter the target cells for further processing by the RNAi silencing complex, processes that may lead to saturation.
14 It follows then, that the dose of siRNA ought to be high enough to produce gene knockdown, but the concentration of the compound at the target site should not compromise endocytosis and processing by the RISC complex. In support of this evidence, preclinical biodistribution analysis performed by our group revealed that maximal amounts of SYL1001 are detected in the cornea and conjunctiva of rabbit eyes after administration of SYL1001 at 1.125%, whereas higher concentrations did not result in greater penetration (data not shown). Finally, other clinical studies have also found great variability in the response to different doses of specific siRNA.
15
An improvement in OSDI scores was observed after treatment with SYL1001; however, its magnitude was similar to that observed with placebo. Comparable findings have been reported in other trials that failed to find improvement in OSDI score after treatment compared with placebo.
16,17 Through the selection of subjective endpoints related to eye dryness and discomfort, recent studies achieved more clinically significant results.
18,19 Consequently, a growing number of reports now focus on these types of questionnaires, such as the new Ora Calibra Ocular Discomfort scale, which are generally more consistent with the symptoms reported by patients with DED.
20,21
In the present study, a placebo effect was detected for both the VAS and OSDI parameters, which is consistent with previous reports that also observed an effect of placebo in the relief of eye dryness and discomfort, and even on CFS.
18,22 Herein, the two phase II trials included patients with mild to moderate DED; of interest, patients suffering from mild dry eye usually find relief in the use of artificial tears, and such impression might have also been achieved through the use of the placebo. In order to substantiate this hypothesis, the data from both groups (treatment and placebo) were dichotomized based on low (≤4) or high (>4) initial VAS; the subgroup analysis showed that in patients with high VAS, the decrease produced by SYL1001 1.125% was more pronounced than that produced by the placebo (
P = 0.0027, data not shown). This observation suggests that future studies should be conducted in more advanced cases of DED. Such patients have already been selected in different studies, such as the ones evaluating the efficacy of cyclosporine (OSDI scores ≥ 23), Lifitegrast (VAS ≥ 40/100), MIM-D3 (TBUT ≤ 5 seconds), and Rebamipide (Schirmer ≤ 5).
5,18–20
In addition to pain stimuli, SYL1001 may prevent the activation of TRPV1 caused by tear hyperosmolarity. Such activation has been shown to induce the release of proinflammatory cytokines such as IL-6, IL-8, and IL-1β.
11 These inflammatory mediators cause epithelial damage, loss of goblet cells, and deregulation of mucin expression that together lead to tear film instability, which might explain the extended TBUT found after treatment with SYL1001. Our study showed an improvement in conjunctival hyperemia and in CFS after exposure to SYL1001 1.125%, suggesting a link with the underlying signalling pathways.
23 Due to the potential inhibitory effect of TRPV1 on fibrosis,
24 we have performed preclinical studies in a rabbit model of corneal wound healing and showed that such process is not affected by SYL1001. Moreover, the transparency of the cornea was found to be increased after treatment with SYL1001 (data not shown).
Taken together, these data suggest an advantage for the use of SYL1001 over cyclosporine eye drops (Ikervis), which was only proved to decrease the expression of one inflammatory marker, with minimal improvement in CFS, and nonsignificant trends for osmolarity and eye discomfort (OSDI and VAS).
5 Another advantage for SYL1001 is its excellent safety profile, with a low proportion of patients with medication-related AEs (4% in each arm) compared with Ikervis (37%). The most frequently reported AE of cyclosporine was pain at the instillation site, which is liable to reduce compliance to treatment. Because the SYL1001 trials were dose finding studies, some of the limitations include a short treatment period and small sample size. However, future trials should allow a more robust demonstration of the efficacy of this siRNA.
Overall, the intrinsic properties of TRPV1 confirm its selection as a suitable candidate for targeting pain-related diseases. In this project, we have developed a new siRNA compound targeting TRPV1, formulated in a sterile ophthalmic solution, that can reduce ocular pain scores assessed by VAS, as well as conjunctival hyperemia associated to dry eye.
Supported by a grant from the 2012 INNPACTO program of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation: INDREYE (Innovative solutions for the treatment and diagnosis of dry eye disease) grant number IPT-2012-0438-010000 (Madrid, Spain).
Meeting Presentation: The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO): 1) May 2, 2015, Denver, Colorado and 2) April 30, 2016, Seattle, Washington.
Disclosure: J.M. Benitez-Del-Castillo, Sylentis (C); J. Moreno-Montañés, Sylentis (C); I. Jiménez-Alfaro, Sylentis (C); F.J. Muñoz-Negrete, None; K. Turman, None; K. Palumaa, None; B. Sádaba, None; M.V. González, Sylentis (E); V. Ruz, Sylentis (E); B. Vargas, Sylentis (E); C. Pañeda, Sylentis (E); T. Martínez, Sylentis (E); A.-M. Bleau, Sylentis (E); A.I. Jimenez, Sylentis (E)