By Simon Spichak, MSc | July 16th, 2023
From new data released at AAIC 2023, here’s what’s different about Alzheon’s experimental Alzheimer’s pill, ALZ-801.
Drugmaker Alzheon is currently running clinical trials on a new disease-modifying Alzheimer’s treatment: valiltramiprosate, or ALZ-801. While, like the new buzzy new Alzheimer’s monoclonal antibodies Leqembi and Aduhelm, it’s also designed to target amyloid proteins in the brain, it’s a little bit different — in some very important ways. And the drugmakers predict it may be just two years before it becomes widely available to people living with Alzheimer’s disease.
It’s delivery method way more user-friendly than anything else like it
A new class of Alzheimer’s drugs has entered the scene in the past two years. They’re “disease-modifying” drugs meaning that, unlike every other Alzheimer’s treatment that preceded them, they don’t just put a band-aid on symptoms — they actually treat the root pathology of the disease itself. One of the drawbacks of the first two of these drugs to achieve some degree of FDA approval, however, is that they’re administered by infusion. That means a patient must travel to a special healthcare facility to get their dose of the drug monthly, and that can pose a serious barrier to access.
The new Alzheon drug, on the other hand, comes in the form of a pill. If the drug proves out, in its further journey through clinical trials and the FDA evaluation process, patients may one day be able to pick their prescription up at the pharmacy counter like any other pill — it would be just that easy.