GC Biopharma aims to boost Alyglo sales sixfold in the US

CHEONGJU, North Chungcheong Province -- South Korea’s major pharmaceutical company GC Biopharma Corp. aims to raise the sales of Alyglo, its immunoglobulin blood product approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in the United States by six times in five years.

GC Biopharma said on Tuesday it set a goal to ramp up sales of Alyglo, a treatment for primary humoral immunodeficiency, to $300 million in the US by 2028 from an expected revenue of $50 million this year. The company plans to launch the medicine, which got the nod from the FDA last December, in the US this July.

“We expect sales to top the target as the current US blood product market is very large,” said Lee Woo Jin, chief executive of GC Biopharma USA Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the South Korean drugmaker, at its Alyglo factory in Ochang, about 130 kilometers (81 miles) south of Seoul.

The US is the world’s largest immunoglobin market with a value of some 13 trillion won ($9.7 billion), while prices of immunoglobin drugs there are about 6.5 times higher than those in South Korea, according to GC Biopharma.

To meet the sales target, GC Biopharma has been in talks with major US specialty pharmacy networks for distribution deals since last month. Specialty pharmacies, which provide medications used to treat rare or complex health problems, handle about 50% of the country’s immunoglobin drugs.

“Pharmaceuticals can launch new products without hiring numerous sales personnel by utilizing specialty pharmacies’ staff,” Lee said.

BLOOD PRODUCTS

A blood product is any therapeutic substance derived from human blood, including whole blood and other blood components for transfusion, and plasma-derived medicinal products.

GC Biopharma’s blood products generated some 100 billion won in sales out of its total revenue of 1.6 trillion won last year.

The company extracts globulin, a protein, from human blood plasma, which contains antibodies to cure diseases, to produce Alyglo, South Korea’s first blood product approved by the FDA. Immunoglobin made with globulin is used to treat more than 200 diseases such as primary immunodeficiencies, neurological disorders and blood diseases.

GC Biopharma’s Ochang plant tests plasma, separates protein, inactivates viruses and fills aseptic bottles to manufacture Alyglo. The medicine becomes a finished product through inspection, labeling and packaging processes.

The company said it introduced its own process to prevent side effects, including thromboembolism, which can occur when using similar drugs, by removing impurities such as blood-clotting factors.

“Since a blood product is processed with human blood, it is important to remove impurities such as viruses,” said Park Hyung-joon, the Ochang plant manager, adding the company eliminates such impurities by up to 99.9%.

Write to Ye-na Kim at yena@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.