This month, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug, lecanemab, for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The drug, sold under the brand name Leqembi, was developed by Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai and will be marketed commercially in partnership with American pharmaceutical company Biogen. Biogen, notably, is the maker of the drug Aduhelm, whose earlier rollout and marketing were a fiasco from scientific and public relations perspectives. Lecanemab is a humanized monoclonal antibody that binds to and lowers brain levels of amyloid beta, the protein suspected of contributing to Alzheimer’s.
Results published Jan. 5 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) came from a multicenter study that enrolled 1,795 participants diagnosed with mild Alzheimer’s. While the disease progressed in both groups, research subjects who were randomized to the lecanemab group showed slower progression of the disease when compared with subjects in the placebo group. Brain scans showed a significant lowering of amyloid in the lecanemab group when compared with the placebo group. Brain swelling and hemorrhage were greater in the active drug group when compared with the placebo group.
There was jubilation among members of the press. Based on the data, it was argued that the disease progressed 27% slower in the active treatment group when compared with the placebo group. The study was hailed as “momentous and historic” by the United Kingdom newspaper The Times.
