Daewoong Pharmaceutical "6 Patents Related to Autoimmune Disease Treatment in 6 Months"

by Byun Seonjin

Published 04 Oct.2023 10:17(KST)

Daewoong Pharmaceutical is accelerating market dominance by consecutively filing patents related to autoimmune disease treatments. Daewoong Pharmaceutical announced on the 4th that it has registered three patents related to autoimmune disease treatments in the past six months.

Currently, Daewoong Pharmaceutical has registered a total of six patents related to autoimmune disease treatments. All of them are patents for kinase inhibition. These include ▲4-Aminopyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidinyl azabicyclo derivatives ▲3-Phenyl-1H-pyrazolopyridine derivatives ▲Thiazolamine derivatives ▲Amino-methylpiperidine derivatives ▲Amino-fluoropiperidine derivatives ▲Pyrrolotriazine derivatives.

In particular, HanAll Biopharma, a subsidiary of Daewoong Pharmaceutical, gained attention on the 26th of last month (local time) with the release of early clinical Phase 1 data by its global partner Immunovant. They disclosed promising early Phase 1 clinical data for the FcRn antibody new drug ‘IMVT-1402 (HanAll code name HL161ANS)’, which is being developed as an autoimmune disease treatment. In Phase 1, HL161ANS demonstrated antibody inhibition efficacy comparable to or higher than batoclimab, and no increases in LDL cholesterol or decreases in albumin levels were observed.

The positive market response to the early clinical results of HL161ANS has brought new attention to Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s autoimmune disease treatment pipeline. Daewoong Pharmaceutical is currently pursuing three projects related to autoimmune disease treatments in different fields, including kinase inhibitors, simultaneously.

Among them, the dual-target mechanism autoimmune disease treatment DWP213388 is an oral therapeutic that is involved in the activation of immune cells such as B cells and T cells. It is a ‘first-in-class’ new drug with a mechanism that selectively and dually inhibits the target proteins Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) and Interleukin-2-inducible T-cell Kinase (ITK). Unlike existing treatments that inhibit either B cells or T cells alone, DWP213388 acts simultaneously on both B cells and T cells.

DWP213388 received approval for its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for Phase 1 clinical trials from the U.S. FDA in August last year. Additionally, in April, it was licensed out to Vitalibio, a subsidiary of the U.S. biotechnology investment company Additum Bio. Excluding royalty income, the upfront payment alone was $11 million (approximately 14.6 billion KRW), with a total contract value of $477 million (approximately 639.1 billion KRW).

Daewoong Pharmaceutical is also developing DWP212525, a new drug for intractable skin autoimmune diseases. DWP212525 is a drug candidate with a mechanism that selectively inhibits targets involved in immune cell activation and has anti-inflammatory effects. Furthermore, Daewoong Pharmaceutical aims to develop an oral treatment applicable to central nervous system (CNS) autoimmune diseases and plans to disclose candidate substances in the first half of next year.

Jeon Seung-ho, CEO of Daewoong Pharmaceutical, stated, “Daewoong Group will dominate the 200 trillion KRW market by developing treatments for severe and intractable autoimmune diseases.”