Duchem Bio said it launched FACBC, the world’s first radiopharmaceutical used when diagnosing prostate cancer patients, in Korea.

The drug, developed by Nihon Medi Physics, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, is used when conducting positron emission tomography (PET) in patients suspected of having prostate cancer recurrence due to an increase in the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in the blood after prostate cancer treatment.

Duchem had licensed-in the treatment from Nihon Medi in 2019.

According to Duchem, FACBC had already received approval in the U.S. and EU in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and has been applied to about 196,000 patients.

Duchem expects that the treatment will help quickly and accurately diagnose prostate cancer lesions, which are limited in diagnosis with existing imaging equipment such as CT and MRI, in Korea.

“This new PET prostate cancer diagnosis radiopharmaceutical is meaningful in that it allows a more accurate image diagnosis than the existing method and has a greater effect on the treatment effect,” Duchem Bio CEO Kim Jong-woo said. “This new drug will also contribute to early diagnosis, treatment, and management of patients with recurrent prostate cancer in Korea, which is gradually increasing.”

Kim stressed that Duchem Bio plans to continue introducing radiopharmaceuticals, which are recognized as innovative cancer treatment agents and plans to gradually expand its business to enter the Asian medical market.