Daewon Pharmaceutical said on the 4th that preclinical studies of its quadruple agonist candidate under development as an obesity drug confirmed effects on weight loss and blood sugar improvement.
The company plans to present these preclinical results at the American Diabetes Association (ADA 2026) meeting in New Orleans from the 5th to the 8th (local time).
The candidate that Daewon Pharmaceutical is co-developing with PharmUs Bioscience is a quadruple agonist that adds a gastrin receptor activation mechanism to a triple agonist simultaneously targeting the glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP), and glucagon (GCG) receptors.
This candidate is a multi-target new drug pipeline designed to induce not only weight loss during obesity treatment but also protection of pancreatic beta cells and improvement of kidney function at the same time. As existing obesity treatments have raised concerns that weight loss effects diminish with long-term administration or that organ function may decline, Daewon Pharmaceutical said it confirmed the potential to overcome these limitations through these preclinical results.
In preclinical testing, the diet-induced obese mouse model showed more than 50% maximum weight loss compared with the control group after 22 days of dosing. Fasting blood glucose also dropped to as low as 70 mg/dL compared with the control group (223 mg/dL), confirming strong efficacy.
Daewon Pharmaceutical will unveil its proprietary multi-agonist design strategy and differentiated receptor activation metrics at the meeting and present detailed preclinical data, including weight changes, food intake, and blood sugar improvement observed in animal models.
Kim Ju-il, executive vice president for research and development (R&D) at Daewon Pharmaceutical, said, "We have continuously accumulated preclinical data for a differentiated multi-agonist pipeline in metabolic diseases," and added, "Based on the fusion of the gastrin mechanism, we will develop metabolic disease treatments that can be expected to go beyond simple weight loss to restoring organ function."