Dongwha Signs Biggest Drug Export Deal
By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter
Local drug maker Dongwha Pharmaceutical has signed a contract with a U.S. pharmaceutical company to export a newly developed substance for a drug to cure osteoporosis.
The deal with Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals (P&G) in the scale of $511 million is the largest contract brokered by a local pharmaceutical company with an international drug seller.
Dongwha Pharmaceutical will provide P&G with the technology to produce the candidate substance for treating the bone disease, called DW1350.
The deal allows the American company to have exclusive sales rights of the substance throughout the world, excluding Asia, once it has been successfully commercialized.
The substance passed pre-clinical tests and the local drug maker’s European lab recently finished the first-phase of clinical study.
Osteoporosis is a bone disease that puts suffers at high risk of fractures. Those with the disease suffer from the reduction of bone mineral density, disruption in bone microarchitecture and alternation of the amount and variety of non-collagenous proteins in bone.