NKGen’s Alzheimer’s Trial Sparks Hope

NKGen just shared some eye-catching results from a very small but hopeful trial of their NK cell therapy, troculeucel, in people with moderate Alzheimer’s disease — and it might be a game-changer.

They presented the data at the AD/PD™ 2025 conference in Vienna, focusing on three patients who received the therapy every three weeks for up to a year. Sounds small, right? But what’s striking is the depth of the response they saw — not just in symptoms, but in the biology of the disease too.

• No safety red flags. None of the patients had any serious side effects related to the therapy. That’s a strong start for a cell therapy in an older population.

• Cognitive function improved or stayed stable. Two of the three patients actually improved after just three months — and stayed on that track through the full 12 months. One person improved so much they shifted from moderate Alzheimer’s to mild cognitive impairment (a huge clinical leap).

• Brain biomarkers moved in the right direction. They saw drops in GFAP (a marker of brain inflammation), and better amyloid beta ratios — all pointing toward disease modification, not just symptom control.

Alzheimer’s is brutal, and treatment options are limited — especially for people already in the moderate stage. Most current drugs target early stages or offer only modest benefits. Troculeucel is different: it’s an immunotherapy using your own natural killer (NK) cells, and it looks like it may actually slow down — or even reverse — disease progression.

Sure, it’s early days (again, just three patients so far), but the signals are there. And now, the therapy is moving into a placebo-controlled Phase 2a trial, which should give us more clarity within the next year.

If these results hold up in a larger group, troculeucel could become a whole new type of treatment for Alzheimer’s — one that goes beyond clearing plaques and targets the immune system to calm inflammation and possibly restore function.