Daewoong Accelerates Global Market Entry with 'Pexuclu'

Daewoong Pharmaceutical's gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) treatment, 'Pexuclu,' the 34th domestic new drug, is accelerating its global expansion by emphasizing its rapid effectiveness.

Daewoong Pharmaceutical's gastroesophageal reflux disease treatment 'Pexuclu'
[Photo by Daewoong Pharmaceutical]

Daewoong Pharmaceutical announced on the 16th that Pexuclu is set to enter the markets of 24 countries worldwide, including South Korea, just one year and six months after its launch. In addition to South Korea and the Philippines, where Pexuclu has already been launched, three Latin American countries?Mexico, Ecuador, and Chile?have obtained product approvals and plan to launch locally within this year. Furthermore, product approval applications have been submitted in 13 countries including China and Saudi Arabia, and export contracts have been signed with six countries such as India and the United Arab Emirates. These 24 countries represent a market size of 8.4 trillion KRW, which accounts for 40% of the global anti-ulcer drug market valued at 21 trillion KRW.

Daewoong Pharmaceutical has set business goals for Pexuclu to apply for product approval in 30 countries by 2025 and to enter 100 countries by 2027. Through this, the company aims to achieve the '1 product, 1 trillion KRW' strategy (annual sales of 1 trillion KRW per product), which is the goal for its three major new drugs including the diabetes treatment 'Enblo' and botulinum toxin 'Nabota.'

A Daewoong Pharmaceutical official explained, “Although there have been cases where domestic new drugs signed multi-country contracts through global deals, actual approvals were not achieved, making it difficult to evaluate them as blockbuster products. Pexuclu thoroughly studied past cases and established a simultaneous domestic and international development strategy from the early stages of development, carefully verifying the countries where actual development and launch could be realized.”

Pexuclu is a next-generation GERD treatment belonging to the potassium-competitive acid blocker (P-CAB) class, which improves on the drawbacks of existing proton pump inhibitor (PPI) treatments for GERD, such as slow onset of action and dietary influences. With a half-life of up to 9 hours, the longest among GERD treatments, it provides prolonged efficacy and excellent symptom improvement from nocturnal acid secretion. Additionally, it offers high convenience by requiring only one tablet once daily regardless of meals, and has strengths including ▲rapid onset of action ▲quick and excellent symptom relief ▲improvement of symptoms caused by nocturnal acid secretion ▲ease of administration ▲low drug interactions and consistent efficacy.

[Photo by Daewoong Pharmaceutical]

Park Sung-soo, Vice President of Daewoong Pharmaceutical, said, “2023 was a year in which Pexuclu achieved steep domestic sales growth and visible global results. This year, we will continue to accelerate the approval process for Pexuclu in each country and achieve our goal of entering 100 countries by 2027.” He added, “We will grow Pexuclu into a global blockbuster in the GERD treatment market and intensify efforts to realize the ‘1 product, 1 trillion KRW’ vision.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.