The health ministry is expected to soon approve a new Alzheimer¡¯s drug after a ministry panel backed the move Thursday, which would make donanemab the second drug approved in Japan to treat the neurodegenerative disease.

Donanemab, developed by U.S. pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly, is designed to remove amyloid beta, an abnormal protein that accumulates in the brains of Alzheimer¡¯s patients, and slow the progression of the disease. It is targeted at patients with early onset Alzheimer¡¯s.

In early experimental trials, the drug was successful in slowing the progress of cognitive decline by 35% compared with those who took a placebo. It was approved for production and sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in July.

The pharmaceutical company filed for approval in Japan last August.

The health ministry panel approved the drug on the condition that, initially, information on the background of all patients who took the drug would be collected and that they would be monitored in order to obtain data on the safety and efficacy of donanemab.

In the U.S., the drug costs $32,000 (?4.8 million) for a 12-month supply, while the price in Japan is yet to be determined.

Donanemab¡¯s approval would follow that of lecanemab, a medication developed by Japanese drugmaker Eisai and U.S. firm Biogen, which was greenlit last September. The drug has been available since December.

Patients using lecanemab need to be put on a drip once every two weeks, but donanemab can be administered once a month. While lecanemab needs to be administered for 1? years, donanemab use can stop once it has been determined that the amount of amyloid beta has decreased in the patient.

The approval comes at a time when the number of patients with dementia continues to rise in the country, with a government report from earlier this year finding that by 2040 nearly 6 million people ¡ª around 15% of those over the age of 65 ¡ª will have the disease, up from 4.4 million in 2022.

The same report estimated that the number of people who are not diagnosed with dementia but have milder symptoms such as memory impairment ¡ª the patient pool that donanemab would target ¡ª would reach 6.13 million by 2040.

Up until recently, treatment for Alzheimer¡¯s was predominantly aimed at relieving symptoms rather than dealing with the underlying cause. With the introduction of drugs such as lecanemab and donanemab, however, patients have more options in starting the treatment earlier on and slowing the progress of the disease.

Combined with emerging technologies such as blood tests that can predict the onset of Alzheimer¡¯s, the two drugs are expected to alleviate the impact from the increase in patients with dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases.