Daewoong Pharmaceutical will begin distributing two of AstraZeneca’s diabetes drugs in Korea starting Mar. 1 under a partnership agreement the two parties signed recently, AstraZeneca Korea said Wednesday.

"We look forward to further expanding our influence in the market because of our partnership with Daewoong Pharmaceutical, which has accumulated several years of experience in the area of diabetes treatment,” said Chon Se-whan, director of AstraZeneca’s Cardiovascular & Metabolic Disease (CVMD) unit.

Xigduo

Starting next month, Daewoong will be in charge of domestic distribution for two of AstraZeneca drugs for type 2 diabetes - Forxiga (dapagliflozin) and Xigduo (dapagliflozin and metformin).

The two companies also noted that they are considering reaching a co-promotion agreement.

Forxiga is a sodium-glucose transport protein 2 (SGLT-2)-inhibitor that helps the kidney remove blood glucose and excrete it through urine. The type-2 diabetes drug was first launched in Korea in 2014 and showed “excellent blood glucose lowering effect,” the company said.

AstraZeneca Korea noted that its diabetes drugs are leading the SGLT-2 inhibitor market in the country. According to UBIST data, Forxiga and Xigduo had combined sales worth 30 billion won ($27.7 million) last year.

The Korean branch of AstraZeneca also said it would announce new Forxiga data from a CVD-REAL trial conducted on more than 300,000 patients, which compared the SGLT-2 inhibitor to another diabetes drug. The company said it confirmed Forxiga to notably decrease the number of hospitalizations and deaths due to heart failure.

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