The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday, January 6, approved a new drug called Lecanemab that can reduce the risk of cognitive degeneration associated with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease by 27%. The drug has been developed by US-based Biogen, along with Eisai, a Japanese drug manufacturing company. It will be available in the market soon by the name Leqembi.
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The clinical trials of the drug were published in November 2022 and it showed that in spite of side effects such as brain swelling and bleeding, the drug can significantly improve the cognitive capacity of patients with mild impairment due to Alzheimer’s.
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“Alzheimer’s disease immeasurably incapacitates the lives of those who suffer from it and has devastating effects on their loved ones,” the director of the Office of Neuroscience in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research said in a statement.
“This treatment option is the latest therapy to target and affect the underlying disease process of Alzheimer’s, instead of only treating the symptoms of the disease,” Bunn added.
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What is Lecanemab?
Lecanemab is the most recent medication to target amyloid, a protein that accumulates improperly in Alzheimer’s patient’s brains. It operates on protofibrils, a kind of amyloid that is highly hazardous to brain neurons. The medication binds to these amyloid fragments and stops them from aggregating to produce the plaques that can impair nerve function in patients.
Lecanemab may be able to halt the progression of the disease such that Alzheimer’s patients have months or even years with fewer memory issues. Every two weeks, patients are given intravenous dosages of the antibody-based on their body weight at the rate of 10 milligrams per kilogram.
