Hyundai Pharm to launch its 20 mg Alzheimer’s drug

Hyundai Pharmaceutical said on Monday that it will launch a 20mg dose of Dimantine (ingredient: memantine hydrochloride), an Alzheimer's disease treatment that improved patient convenience, in the domestic market. 

Dimantine is a non-competitive antagonist of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor-based drug licensed to treat moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease. It blocks NMDA receptors abnormally activated by synaptic elevated glutamates to maintain learning and memory-related physiological activity, thereby preventing or slowing the disease, said a Hyundai Pharmaceutical official.

Previously, Hyundai Pharm sold the drug in 5mg and 10mg formulations but the new 20mg formulation was only approved for sale by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) on Oct. 28.

Accordingly, the 20mg oral administration formulation can now be administered once a day, to improve medicine compliance for patients and guardians compared to the existing 10mg formulation which needs to be administered twice a day.

According to the company, pharmacokinetic tests and comparative clinical trials showed that the effectiveness and safety of Dimantine’s 20 mg and 10mg formulations were similar.

In addition, the minimum requirements for Alzheimer’s patients to qualify for insurance coverage is less than 20 for Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) and a Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) of 2-3 or Global Dementia Scale (GDS) of 4-7.

"It is important to ensure that Alzheimer’s patients can take medicine continuously without forgetting the time and frequency to take the medicine," An official from Hyundai Pharmaceutical said, "We expect this to help reduce the possibility of inaccurate doses by using a single daily dose to provide new treatment options for patients."

As of 10:05 a.m. on Monday, Hyundai Pharmaceutical’s shares stood at 4,870 won ($3.84), up by 1.67 percent from the previous trading day.