China's National Medical Products Administration approved the market launch of a drug, GV-971, on Saturday, making it the only Alzheimer's medicine out of more than 320 developed by pharmaceutical companies around the globe to survive clinical trials, despite the investment of hundreds of billions of US dollars over the past two decades.
Extracted from brown algae, the orally taken drug is the world's first multi-targeting and carbohydrate-based drug for Alzheimer's, the administration said. It can treat mild to moderate forms of the disease and improve cognition, it said.
The first production line for the drug, which will meet the needs of 2 million patients, will begin running this week. Patients will be able to buy the drug around the country from Dec 29, and more production lines will gradually be put into operation to satisfy market demand, according to Shanghai Green Valley Pharmaceutical, one of the drug's developers.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, which jointly developed the drug with Green Valley and Ocean University of China after 22 years of research, said there were previously five medicines with limited efficacy used to treat the disease, which was discovered a century ago.
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