Korea Pharma said Wednesday that it signed a joint development contract with G2GBIO and Humedix to develop a one-month long-lasting Alzheimer's dementia injection-based treatment called GB-5001. 

Under the agreement, the three companies will jointly develop a newly improved injection-based drug for treating Alzheimer's dementia to replace the existing donepezil oral drug, said an officialt at Korea Pharma.

Donepezil is the most commonly prescribed ingredient in Alzheimer's dementia treatments. However, dementia patients often encounter difficulties in swallowing the medicine or taking the medicine on time due to a decrease in memory.

As such, the cooperative strengths of these companies will be combined to maintain a constant drug effect for a month’s duration to increase medication compliance while improving patients' administration convenience,  the official said.

Through this joint development, G2GBIO will apply its innovative long-acting microparticles (InnoLAMP) platform technology to develop and produce the formulation of donepezil injections that last for a month in the body. Meanwhile, Korea Pharma and Humedix will be responsible for conducting clinical trials, item licensing, and sales.

Additionally, Korea Pharma and Humedix will pay a certain percentage of royalties and have domestic copyrights when commercializing technology and products based on the achievement of G2GBIO's product.

The domestic market for Alzheimer's donepezil-based dementia treatments stood at about 260 billion won ($199 million) last year, accounting for 80 percent of the total dementia treatment market.