Daewoong Pharmaceutical Targets Global Obesity Market with "Microneedle" Painless Injection

Full-scale push into the 289 trillion won market by 2030
Expanding indications to include "maintenance therapy"

Daewoong Pharmaceutical announced on February 25 that it has signed an exclusive global license agreement with Daewoong Therapeutics for products utilizing microneedle technology. Through this, the company plans to begin in earnest its strategy to target the global market in the field of obesity and metabolic disease treatments, focusing on microneedle patches.

Full-scale push into the 289 trillion won obesity market projected for 2030, expanding indications to "maintenance therapy"

According to global healthcare market research firm IQVIA, the global obesity treatment market, which was about 30 billion dollars (approximately 4.3 trillion won) in 2024, is expected to grow rapidly to 200 billion dollars (approximately 289 trillion won) by 2030. The domestic market is also showing steep growth, reaching about 270 billion won in the first half of last year alone, a 51% surge compared to the same period a year earlier.

A magnified photograph showing the drug layer of the microneedle patch developed by Daewoong Therapeutics, with dye added to visually depict the layer. Daewoong Pharmaceutical

Keeping pace with this market trend, Daewoong Pharmaceutical is accelerating the development of obesity treatments that apply GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) class drugs such as semaglutide to microneedle patches. The semaglutide patch, which is currently in Phase 1 clinical trials, is designed to expand its indication to include "maintenance therapy" that stably manages reduced body weight, with the strategy of building a pipeline that covers the entire treatment cycle of obesity.

This is expected to serve as a key mid- to long-term growth engine that can secure technological superiority in the global microneedle market, estimated at about 550 million dollars, while at the same time strengthening the company’s position in the obesity treatment market, which is worth hundreds of trillions of won.

Although microneedle technology was conceptualized as a theoretical technology about 20 years ago, there have been high barriers to actual commercialization. It was difficult to load a sufficient amount of drug into a small, coin-sized area, and there were limitations in that the core components of the drug were easily degraded by the heat applied during the micro-needle molding process.

The microneedle patch developed by Daewoong Therapeutics has overcome the barriers that global companies have not been able to break through. Using a special process that does not apply heat, it maintains the core components of the drug and implements differentiated technological capabilities by precisely loading a high dose of the drug into each of about 100 needles within a coin-sized area. In particular, safety has been secured from the design stage through an aseptic manufacturing process, and the patch is engineered to deliver sufficient efficacy with just once-a-week application, overcoming the limitations of existing patches.

This innovation is being evaluated as having made the concept of a "painless injection" a reality by converting treatments that were previously only possible by injection into a convenient skin-adhesive format. It not only enables one-stop treatment by minimizing the cumbersome processes of injection preparation, disinfection, and disposal, but also reduces patients' fear of needles and injection pain. Through this, it is expected to improve convenience for healthcare professionals and patients' medication adherence, and to change the paradigm of obesity treatment.

Reducing commercialization burdens and focusing on technology advancement

This agreement demonstrates that Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s open innovation goes beyond simple technology introduction and functions as a strategic partnership that leads to tangible business outcomes. By taking charge of areas that involve high risks and require large investments, such as global marketing and large-scale commercialization, Daewoong Pharmaceutical has reduced the burden on its partner while securing clear business rights, thereby establishing a win-win model.

As the patent holder of the microneedle patch platform technology, Daewoong Therapeutics plans to continue independent business development using this technology and to expand the scope of its application. In particular, by being freed from the burden of global development and commercialization for each product, the company can now fully focus its research capabilities on enhancing the fundamental technology and discovering new pipelines, thereby strengthening the competitiveness of the platform itself.

Daewoong Pharmaceutical CEO Park Sungsoo said, "Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s strategic open innovation, in which we share the commercialization risks of development-specialized companies that possess technological capabilities in exchange for securing exclusive license rights, is our unique competitive edge," adding, "Through this agreement, we will actively target the rapidly growing obesity treatment market with microneedle patches."

Daewoong Therapeutics CEO Kang Bokki said, "As the patent holder, we have reached an important turning point where our microneedle platform technology is entering a full-scale commercialization phase," and added, "Based on our confidence in commercialization, we will devote ourselves to advancing the technology and complete a next-generation drug delivery system that is recognized in the global market."