Pipeline Watch is a weekly snapshot of selected late-stage clinical trial events announced by pharmaceutical and biotech companies at medical and industry conferences, in financial and company presentations, and in company releases and statements.

Having relatively rapidly built a multi-billion dollar market in wet age-related macular degeneration, biotech and pharma companies may be about to repeat the exercise with diabetic macular edema, a complication of diabetes that’s growing in importance as the population ages and the disease spreads.

Money will finance 1,900-patient, 200-site Phase III trial for wet AMD drug Fovista, expected to work in concert with anti-VEGF therapies such as Lucentis to restore eye function. The transaction is just the latest ophthalmology financing involving Novo AS, SV Life Sciences and executives once with Eyetech.

Biopharma financing dropped in Q3 2011 to $1.3 billion, down from $6.3 billion in Q2. There were 20 M&A deals that totaled $30.9 billion, attributed mainly to the $27.7 million merger of PBMs Express Scripts and Medco. Almost a quarter of the alliances penned were for preclinical assets.