Dongkook Pharmaceutical unveiled an improved new drug that combines two benign prostatic hyperplasia treatments into one, moving to target the benign prostatic hyperplasia treatment market.
Dongkook Pharmaceutical said on the 28th that it launched this month Uresco tablets (hereafter Uresco), an improved fixed-dose combination that unites 5 mg of tadalafil and 0.5 mg of dutasteride into a single tablet.
Benign prostatic hyperplasia is a disease in which enlarged prostate tissue compresses the urethra, causing voiding dysfunction and lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). Key symptoms include delayed urination, weak stream, a feeling of incomplete emptying, frequent urination, urgency, and nocturia, and it is known to affect 7 out of 10 men in their 50s and older.
Because it is a chronic disease, long-term treatment and management are needed, and there have been treatment limits as lower urinary tract symptoms vary by patient and voiding and storage symptoms often appear together. As a result, the clinical setting has called for more segmented treatment options and alternatives.
Treatment generally uses 5α-reductase inhibitors (finasteride, dutasteride), which reduce prostate size, but because improvement does not appear immediately, combination therapy using several drugs together to improve symptoms is employed.
Uresco was developed to reflect these clinical needs. It is the world's first combination of the PDE-5 inhibitor tadalafil and the 5α-reductase inhibitor dutasteride. Tadalafil improves voiding and storage symptoms, and dutasteride reduces prostate size to slow disease progression. The company said Uresco combines these two ingredients into a once-daily pill, enabling faster symptom relief and improving patient convenience.
Kim Cheong-su, head of the Prostate Cancer Center at Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital, who oversaw the phase 3 trial of Uresco, said, "By combining the two ingredients, we can expect both rapid symptom improvement and long-term management." Kim added, "It also has a positive effect on improving sexual dysfunction side effects, offering a strong treatment option for patients who worried about side effects of existing therapies."
A Dongkook Pharmaceutical official said, "With the launch of Uresco, we expect to further expand personalized treatment access for medical staff and patients."