Lon Schneider, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Southern California, discusses this.

One, for example, is the better development and the emerging use of subcutaneous licanumab to be used not just for maintenance, but also for treatment initiation using self-injectors, subcutaneous injectors, as you would for some diabetes and for the GLP-1 agonists as well.

So that's important.

And so I describe it as more news-like because it was more a presentation of older results.

But it brings to the fore the question of, can these antibodies be used this way? And it raises the questions of whether patients will comply, will self-inject, can do that, and whether this will ultimately be cheaper and perhaps more effective in the sense that people have used it.

Lon Schneider offered a more cautious read.

It clearly knocked down TAL.

And I think it knocked down TAL in such a way that when you look at what the adverse event profile is and you look at the general lack of clinical outcomes, it still justifies the need for a larger phase 2b study or possibly phase 3 study.

The drug didn't restore her memory, but after four years of treatment, she wasn't getting worse, at least not very quickly. So was the drug working? Not necessarily says Dr. Lon Schneider, who directs the Alzheimer's Center at USC.

We don't know that and we don't have the ability to say, "Because you've taken the medication, you haven't declined."

Schneider says what is clear is that after a year or more on Kesunlah, the beta amyloid plaques in a patient's brain are usually down to normal levels. He says that's led to a new approach with this drug, which was approved in 2024.

Treat until plaques are down to normal and then stop, and perhaps re-treat if plaques begin to grow back.