Korean pharmas jump on weight loss drug boom

Industry

Published: 20 Sep. 2023, 16:07 Updated: 21 Sep. 2023, 14:27

Korean pharmas jump on weight loss drug boom

Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drug Wegovy [JOONGANG PHOTO]

The surging popularity of the weight-loss drug made Novo Nordisk the most valuable company in Europe, and now Korean pharmas are vying to get a slice of the burgeoning market for the so-called “lifestyle drugs.”

New York-listed Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmaceutical company, reached a market cap of $420.8 billion as of Tuesday. The company’s market cap outran the $409.9 billion of LVMH, which had been at the top spot among European companies before the Danish pharma came along.

[INTERVIEW] Pharma firms playing pivotal role in obesity epidemic battle

Novo Nordisk’s stock price spiked nearly 40 percent this year, with its weight-loss drug Wegovy flying off the shelves.

Weight regulation medication is one prominent example of a lifestyle drug, which is a broad term referring to medication that targets painless conditions and, by extension, aims to improve the general quality of life. Lifestyle drugs, therefore, are considered to have relatively larger scalability in the market compared to therapeutic drugs targeting specific indications.

Weight-loss drugs are among those in hottest demand across the globe, with the number of obese people estimated at 650 million worldwide.

The global obesity treatment market is expected to reach $54 billion by 2030, according to Morgan Stanley.

Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk has already been a leading player in the market with its weight-loss treatment Saxenda.

Both Wegovy and Saxenda are effective glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists, meaning that the drugs mimic the hormone’s function to control appetite. While Saxenda needs to be injected daily, Wegovy, which hit the market in 2021, needs only weekly injections.

The global popularity of Wegovy has been further fueled by testimonials from celebrities. Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, for one, mentioned “fasting and Wegovy” as the secret to his successful weight loss on social media.

Despite its price starting at $1,300 per four doses, Novo Nordisk is struggling to keep up with the soaring demand for Wegovy.

Indiana-based Eli Lilly also saw a 28 percent on-year surge in revenue in the second quarter, riding high on the popularity of its weight-loss drug Mounjaro. Of the $8.31 billion quarterly revenue, obesity treatments took $979.7 million, or 12 percent of the total.

Korean pharmaceutical companies are also scrambling to tap into the fast-expanding market for lifestyle drugs.

In July, Hanmi Pharmaceutical submitted an investigational new drug application (IND) to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for a phase III clinical study of its efpeglenatide injectable drug, with the indication changed from a diabetes treatment to an obesity treatment.

Hanmi previously said that the efpeglenatide drug showed a weight loss effect of 5 percent in its phase III trial for diabetes.

Il Dong Pharmaceutical was granted approval by the authorities for its IND for the phase I trial of its metabolic disease drug candidate ID110521156, which will be used to develop a new drug targeting type 2 diabetes and obesity.

Anti-hair loss treatment is also considered a lifestyle drug. The global hair loss treatment market is expected to grow 8.4 percent per year on average until 2027, to reach $6.2 billion from 2020’s $3.5 billion, according to market tracker Research and Markets.

The number of people affected by hair loss is estimated at some 10 million in Korea.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved Eli Lilly and Pfizer’s drug for hair loss caused by an autoimmune disease, alopecia areata.

In Korea, JW Pharmaceutical is developing a hair-regrowth drug candidate JW0061. Chong Kun Dang Pharmaceutical is running the phase I trial of CKD-843, an injectable drug for alopecia.

“Companies are aggressively developing new drugs with high market potential,” said a source from the pharmaceutical industry, adding that the “the companies’ research and development capabilities will be focused on common diseases such as diabetes, hair loss, or cancer, which a large number of people are suffering from.”

BY LEE SOO-KI [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]