Chong Kun Dang Pharmaceutical said it would tap the 350 billion won ($267.4 million) local gastritis market with its new natural product-based treatment.

On Monday, the drugmaker won regulatory approval for G-Tec (ingredient: cinnamon bark dried extract) to treat acute and chronic gastritis.

Chong Kun Dang recently obtained approval for G-Tec to treat acute and chronic gastritis.
Chong Kun Dang recently obtained approval for G-Tec to treat acute and chronic gastritis.

Chong Kun Dang said it applied its new extraction method to cinnamon bark, a medical herb. The company said G-Tec is the first natural product-derived medicine that proved efficacy in gastritis.

The company has been searing for drug candidates among various herbal medicines and exploring extraction methods since 2013. Then, it found cinnamon bark’s potential to treat gastritis and started developing it as a treatment.

In the preclinical phase, the treatment showed an anti-inflammatory effect and its protective factor enhanced gastric mucus secretion.

In a phase 2 study, the company confirmed the drug candidate’s benefit in treating gastritis, compared to placebo, existing chemical drugs, and natural product-based medicines.

A phase 3 study began in October 2019, aiming to prove G-Tec’s superiority, not non-inferiority, to conventional drugs. The research team divided 242 patients with acute or chronic gastritis into the G-Tec group and the control group (artemisia herb 95 percent ethanol soft extract).

The randomized, double-blind, parallel-design, and multicenter study found that G-Tec had superior efficacy in gastritis compared to conventional therapies.

According to the phase 3 study results, the G-Tec group showed a 2.25 times higher improvement rate in gastroscopy, the primary endpoint, compared to the control group.

In the secondary endpoints such as gastritis cure rate, edema, redness, and bleeding, the company said the G-Tec group showed much better improvement of symptoms.

“Unlike a usual comparative study that proves non-inferiority, our study proved G-Tec’s superiority to existing medicines,” an official at Chong Kun Dang said.

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