Icure Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company in Korea, announced today that its donepezil patch, a treatment of Alzheimer’s-type dementia, received a drug product approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety of Korea.

The drug product approval process took 7 months after it applied in April 2021. With the approval, Icure marks the first commercialization of the donepezil patch in the world.

Donepezil is a current typical treatment that has been widely prescribed for the longest period for Alzheimer’s disease patients in severity ranging from mild to moderate and severe ones among FDA-approved Alzheimer's treatments. Due to difficulty in the development of its formulations, donepezil has been commercialized for only oral administration to date.

With successful completion of a Phase III clinical trial for the first time in the world, the donepezil patch of Icure is expected to significantly improve the quality of life of patients with Alzheimer’s-type dementia and their caregivers by enhancing the convenience in its use from orally taking once daily to putting a patch on skin twice a week.

‘’Based on outstanding efficacy and marketability of donepezil along with our technological prowess, we expect our donepezil patch will sufficiently take over the market of donepezil oral products as we have seen a high conversion rate of rivastigmine patches in the past,” said CEO YoungKweon Choi, Ph.D. of Icure, who led donepezil patch development. “We reported results of the Phase III clinical trial of donepezil patch at the Conference on Clinical Trials of Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD) that was held on November 9-12, 2021 in Boston, Massachusetts.” He attended the CTAD Conference to present the results of the clinical study while making consultations on potential global transactions.