RJ Tesi
Analyst · BTIG. Please proceed with your question.
Yes. So thank you. Very two good questions. So the current estimate for the cost of care -- the cost of receiving an anti-amyloid drug for the first year is $82,000, A little more than US$82,000. That's -- only a one-third of that is the cost of the drug. So two-thirds of that is really all of the safety monitoring and what's needed for diagnosis of the disease. We believe that XPro will not have that burden. In other words, right now, our enrollment criteria include basically a set of blood tests, which are all relatively cheap, nothing fancy, can be done virtually in any lab in the country. and an MRI scan that requires some set of reading, but that is not expensive. There's no PET scans and there's no need for -- at least as we envision it today, there's no need for additional follow-up MRI scans. So yes, you know how pharmaceutical pricing works. The first drug company sets the price, which has been done. And then you can adjust the pricing based on whether you're better. We think if we do meet our clinical goal of stabilizing cognitive decline that allows us for premium pricing. And I would expect that premium pricing would come well within that $82,000 bracket, although don't hold me to that, we're a little ways off from that decision. But the bottom line is the current drugs are difficult to use. They're complicated. I think their uptake is going to be somewhat -- will be slow because of that sophistication needed for managing those patients and the resources, such as MRI scans, which are going to be needed for those managing those patients. As far as the more recent events with major depressive disorder, we found that very interesting and actually quite validating about how we do our CNS drug development. Clearly, although I've not seen the data, I'm not going to comment on it, we are very sensitive to the fact that particularly in depression, but in all central nervous system diseases, placebo effects always are what captured you by surprise. And the way to eliminate surprises on the placebo side is to better control your patient enrollment criteria using enrichment factors. The oncologist learned this, 20 years ago. The CNS drug developers have not yet learned it. We take this seriously. And in our Alzheimer's trials, these patients all have neuroinflammation and actually in the trial that we planned in treatment-resistant depression, they will all have neuroinflammation. We believe by using that kind of, shall we say, discipline and enrollment, it will prevent surprises on the placebo end or the placebo response and allow you to really accurately assess the drug's effect on the disease.