As the global obesity drug market shifts its competitive focus from "how much weight patients lose" to "how well the effect holds with fewer injections," South Korean pharmaceutical and biotech firms are also making progress on long-acting formulations that sharply cut the number of doses required.
JW Pharmaceutical said on the 18th that it had filed a Phase 3 clinical trial plan with the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for its obesity drug candidate bofanglutide. The company plans to begin the trial in 300 domestic adults with obesity or who are overweight this December, evaluating weight-loss efficacy and safety against a placebo through March 2029.
Bofanglutide is a GLP-1 receptor agonist for which JW Pharmaceutical secured exclusive domestic development and commercialization rights from China's Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals in April. Unlike Eli Lilly's Mounjaro, a leading GLP-1 treatment given once a week, it is being developed as a subcutaneous injection administered once every two weeks. Its key advantage is cutting the number of annual doses in half, from 52 to 26. In a Phase 3 trial in China, weight loss of 15.12% and 18.54% was confirmed after 52 weeks of dosing in the 24 mg and 48 mg groups, respectively.
Development aimed at even longer dosing intervals is also underway across the industry. Peptron is developing PT403, which applies its proprietary drug-delivery platform "SmartDepot" to the GLP-1 compound semaglutide, and is conducting preclinical experiments targeting once-monthly dosing. Yuhan and Inventage Lab are jointly developing IVL3021, a once-monthly long-acting semaglutide-based injection. A recently released study confirmed that the weight-loss effect was sustained with once-monthly dosing alone.
Hanmi Pharmaceutical is focusing on boosting drug potency rather than on dosing intervals. It is developing HM15275, a triple agonist that simultaneously stimulates GLP-1, GIP and glucagon, as a once-weekly formulation, and is conducting a Phase 2 trial aimed at stronger weight loss and minimized muscle loss compared with existing treatments.
An industry official explained that "because obesity drugs are not medications taken for a short period but treatments for a chronic condition that must be administered over the long term, the convenience of dosing for patients can determine whether treatment actually continues," adding that "going forward, competition over long-acting technology — reducing doses from once a week to once every two weeks and then once a month while stably maintaining efficacy, on top of weight-loss effects — will grow even fiercer."
