‘An important milestone:’ Canada approves expensive new drug that can slow Alzheimer’s disease – CTV
October 27, 2025
An expensive new drug that can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease was approved by Health Canada on Friday.
While existing medications treat Alzheimer’s symptoms, lecanemab is the first drug authorized in Canada that targets the disease’s underlying cause in order to reduce the rate of cognitive and functional decline.
“This is an important milestone,” neurologist Dr. Sharon Cohen told CTVNews.ca. “What this does is slow down the disease at an early stage where people are still living at home and functioning quite well.”
Cohen, who was involved in clinical trials of the drug, is the medical director of the Toronto Memory Program, a clinic that specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s and related disorders.
“If you think about the treatments we’ve had so far for Alzheimer’s disease, they’ve been directed at the dementia stage of the disease, where people are already dependent,” Cohen explained by phone on Monday. “Now we have something that goes much earlier in the disease … this is a big deal.”
