HK inno.N has signed a contract with Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, an India-based multinational pharmaceutical company, to export finished products of K-CAB (ingredient: tegoprazan), a drug for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), to seven countries.
The seven countries are India, South Africa, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, and Belarus. The company now exports the treatment to 34 countries with the recent addition.
Under the accord, Dr. Reddy's Lab will have the right to exclusively distribute K-CAB within the contracted country for the next decade after releasing the product.
HK inno.N expects K-CAB's market share to increase rapidly in the seven countries through Dr. Ready's global sales network. Notably, except for Japan, HK inno.N has now succeeded in exporting K-CAB to three of the four largest markets -- China, the U.S., and India -- for the global peptic ulcer solvent treatment, a company official said Wednesday.
According to HK inno.N, the size of the peptic ulcer solvent market in India was about 900 billion won ($703.1 million) in the third quarter of last year, ranking fourth after China (3.1 trillion won), the U.S. (2.8 trillion won), and Japan (2.1 trillion won).
"The peptic ulcer solvent market is the field we are mostly paying attention to, and K-CAB's excellent competitiveness and our strong sales network will create great synergy in penetrating the market," said M. V. Ramana, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories' executive vice president and head of branded markets, including India and emerging countries.
An HK inno.N official also said, "This is the first year of K-CAB's global expansion, and the company expects global sales of the drug to expand in earnest."
She added that the goal is to export K-CAB to 100 countries, including Europe, by 2028.
K-CAB became Korea's 30th novel drug in 2018. It is the first potassium-competitive acid blocker (P-CAB) to obtain the indication for EE(Erosive esophagitis) and NERD(Non-erosive reflux disease) GERD in Korea.
While conventional treatments, such as proton pump inhibitors (PPI), need three to five days to show efficacy, P-CAB drugs suppress gastric acid secretion in just one hour. In addition, p-CAB treatments also inhibit excessive secretion of gastric acid during nighttime, reducing chest pain and a sleep disorder.