Market sales of Saxenda & Qsymia are the highest ever

Last year's domestic obesity treatment market sales of ₩143 billion, up 7% from the previous year

Saxenda leads ₩36.8 billion in sales, Qsymia, ₩22.5 billion

Despite COVID-19 incident last year, the domestic obesity treatment market set a new record.

 

the market sales of Qsymia and Saxenda, which is known for injectables to lose weight, expanded to the highest level ever.

 

According to IQVIA on the 23rd, the domestic market for obesity treatments last year was ₩143 billion.

 

It has achieved the largest scale ever, increasing 6.6% from the previous year.

 

Compared to ₩96.8 billion in 2018, this is an increase of 47.7% in two years.

 

Belviq (Lorcaserin), which had formed annual sales of ₩10 billion, was withdrawn due to safety issues at the end of 2019 and suffered a global recession due to COVID-19, but it recorded a new record in sales for the third consecutive year.

 

NovoNordisk's Saxenda and Alvogen Korea's Qsymia led the expansion of obesity treatments.

 

Last year, Saxenda recorded sales of ₩36.8 billion.

 

Although it decreased by 13.6% from the previous year, the sales volume is the largest among obesity treatment drugs on the market.

 

The market share based on accumulated sales last year was 25.7%, maintaining a gap of about 10%p.

 

Saxenda is the world's first obesity treatment approved as an analogue of GLP-1 (Glucagon-Like Peptide 1).

 

It is the same as Victoza (Liraglutide), which is prescribed for type 2 diabetics.

 

It has enjoyed a boom over the past two years as a perception that it is relatively safe because it acts as the same mechanism as GLP-1 in the human body to suppress appetite and induce weight loss.

 

Saxenda ranked first in sales of obesity drugs in the fourth quarter of 2018, the first year of its release, with sales of ₩5.6 billion.

 

In the first quarter of 2019, it set a record of ₩10.5 billion in sales and ₩11.9 billion in sales in the third quarter of the same year.

 

At that time, the market share of Saxenda reached 33.7%.

 

Qsymia was released in the first quarter of last year with sales of ₩4.3 billion, and at the same time, it ranked second in sales of obesity drugs.

 

Since then, sales rose sharply to ₩5.8 billion in the second quarter and ₩6.5 billion in the third quarter.

 

Last year's cumulative sales of Qsymia were ₩22.5 billion, and the market share was 15.7%.

 

In the fourth quarter of last year, the quarterly sales of both Saxenda and Qsymia decreased slightly, but the proportion of the total obesity treatment market accounted for 41.5% of the total sales among the 110 products.

 

Qsymia is a combination of Phentermine/Topiramate, which Alvogen Korea obtained domestic copyright from Vivus in the United States in 2017.

 

Alvogen Korea signed a joint sales contract with Chong Kun Dang at the end of 2019 and began marketing in earnest from the beginning of last year.

 

The sales power of Chong Kun Dang and Alvogen Korea, which has the know-how to sell obesity drugs such as Furing and Furimin, created a synergy.

 

Although Belviq was withdrawn, Qsymia, which contains relatively low psychotropic ingredient and can be prescribed for a long period of time, was released even though it is an oral drug.

 

It is an analysis that it was able to continue unprecedented success in the obesity treatment market.

 

Except for Saxenda and Qsymia, sales of other products were sluggish last year.

 

Last year's sales of Daewoong's Dietamin were ₩9.2 billion, down 3.2% from the previous year.

 

Until the fourth quarter of 2019, it was the second most-selling item after Saxenda, but sales decreased with the release of Qsymia.

 

Huons' Hutermin (₩6.1 billion) and Alvogen Korea's Furing (₩5.1 billion) also decreased by 1.6% and 3.8% compared to the previous year's sales.

 

It is observed that NovoNordisk, which has successfully developed generics, has not yet decided to release it in Korea and that competition between Saxenda and Qsymia will continue for the time being.