Daewoong Pharmaceutical has added a once-monthly semaglutide injection to an obesity pipeline that already includes oral drugs and microneedle patches, giving the Korean drugmaker three shots at a market increasingly defined by how easily patients can stay on treatment.
The company said Friday it signed a strategic partnership with Korean biotech Tionlab Therapeutics to develop and commercialize the long-acting GLP-1 treatment globally.
Once-monthly long-acting semaglutide injection jointly developed by Daewoong Pharmaceutical and Tionlab Therapeutics (Courtesy of Daewoong Pharmaceutical)
The partners filed a phase 1 investigational new drug (IND) application in Korea in April and plan to dose the first patient this year.
Daewoong told Korea Biomedical Review that the program is the first domestic long-acting GLP-1 obesity treatment to submit a phase 1 clinical trial application in Korea.
The monthly formulation would cut semaglutide dosing from 52 injections a year to 12, a convenience play in a market still dominated by weekly GLP-1 shots.
Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s proprietary CURE platform applied to the once-monthly long-acting semaglutide injection (Courtesy of Daewoong Pharmaceutical)
The product combines Tionlab’s Quject Sphere drug-delivery platform with Daewoong’s CURE microsphere technology. The companies said the technologies are designed to package semaglutide into tiny particles, limiting how much drug is released early and helping it enter the body more steadily over time.
Daewoong is building several obesity drug formats at once. Alongside the long-acting injection, the company is developing oral obesity drugs and microneedle patches.
Kim Ji-hye
댓글
0