Korea’s First Homegrown GLP-1 Cut Weight 9.75% at 40 Weeks, So Hanmi Will Fight Wegovy and Mounjaro on Price and Supply
Hanmi Pharmaceutical said on 7 October that South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety had approved efpeglenatide, sold as Eppe, a GLP-1 receptor agonist built on Hanmi’s LAPSCOVERY long-acting platform. The label covers chronic weight management in adults without diabetes who have a BMI of 30 or more, or 27 or more with a weight-related condition, alongside diet and exercise. The ministry counts it as Korea’s 45th domestically developed new drug, and Hanmi calls it the first GLP-1 obesity drug a Korean company has taken from discovery to sale on its own. Hanmi will make it entirely at its Pyeongtaek plant and has not disclosed a price.
Hanmi’s case against the imports rests on price and supply. Its 40-week interim figure trails the 14.9% semaglutide reached at 68 weeks in STEP 1 and the 20.9% for tirzepatide’s top dose at 72 weeks in SURMOUNT-1, though the populations and durations differ. The levers Hanmi controls are a low starting price, a plant in Korea and a trial run entirely in Korean patients.
- Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly in Korea: the contest is for patients who have not started. Hanmi says it set the starting-dose price to lower the barrier to treatment, and it titrates in two- and four-week steps to limit gastrointestinal effects. A cash-paying patient choosing a first GLP-1 on monthly cost is the one most open to a local alternative, so expect the incumbents to answer on starting-dose price and supply.
- Korean obesity developers: Hanmi has set the domestic bar. A Korean Phase 3 dataset and in-house manufacturing are now the reference for the next local entrant, which will need more weight loss or a better format to stand out. Hanmi is already developing prefilled syringe and multi-pen versions to cut cost and help adherence.
- Signposts: the price, the first quarters and the diabetes filing. Watch the launch price against Wegovy and Mounjaro, early share in clinics where patients pay cash, the full Phase 3 results beyond the 40-week interim, and the type 2 diabetes approval Hanmi is targeting for 2028.
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