Week in review: Legal hang-up, orange boost, billions and billions

A weekly roundup of ophthalmic news from around the web.

A drop-sized lawsuit has been squeezed out of deliberations by the U.S. Supreme Court. Last summer, patients with glaucoma and other eye conditions alleged that current bottle designs dispense oversized drops, causing at least half of every drop to go to waste. This spring, a handful of drugmakers, including Allergan, Bausch & Lomb, Merck and Pfizer, asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the case. But the higher court refused to hear the drug industry’s appeal, so Alcon Laboratories v. Leonard Cottrell will remain in the hands of a lower court. Inside Health Policy, Press Herald

“An orange a day keeps macular degeneration away,” the Westmead Institute for Medical Research announced last week. Researchers at the Australian institute completed a 15-year, 2,000-person study of the benefits of phytochemicals with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Their findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest that consuming at least 1 orange a day could cut the risk of developing AMD by 60%. Westmead Institute for Medical Research

Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. gained “unconditional clearance” from the United States Federal Trade Commission to buy Shire Plc for $62 billion, Reuters reported this week. But the deal’s not done: Takeda still needs approval from regulators in China, the European Union and elsewhere, as well from shareholders of both parties. The drugmaker expects the sale to close early next year. Reuters

Five patients with atrophic dry AMD are wearing Pixium Vision’s bionic vision system. The patients received the miniature wireless photovoltaic subretinal implant, called PRIMA, as part of an ongoing feasibility and safety trial in France. The implant appears to restore central visual perception, consistent with reports earlier this year. The team will follow the patients for 36 months in preparation for the large European trial needed to win the CE mark. Pixium

Q BioMed’s Tie2 activating molecule—an biologic eye drop for open-angle glaucoma—is progressing through the development pipeline, the company reports. Patents have been filed for novel compounds that can activate Tie2 receptor-mediated signaling, and proof-of-concept experiments have been completed on one of these, called MAN-11. More to come. Biomed