Even celebrities cannot escape the "height anxiety" of their children, which supports the tens of billions growth hormone market | Early-stage projects

Where there is anxiety, there is business. This statement is particularly evident in the medical industry.

Recently, the news that the child of Olympic boxing champion Zou Shiming is taking growth hormone due to height issues has frequently made it to the Weibo trending list. While netizens are surprised that "even celebrity couples cannot escape the height anxiety of their children", the low-key billion-dollar growth hormone market has once again attracted attention.

According to the Frost & Sullivan report, in 2023, the market size of the growth hormone for Chinese people has exceeded 11 billion yuan, and it is expected to increase to 28.6 billion yuan by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 13.7%.

As a consumer medical "single product" highly sought after by parents, the growth hormone has also undergone many technological iterations, gradually evolving from the initial need to inject once a day to the "long-acting preparation" era of injecting once a week.

In the past nearly 10 years, the only long-acting growth hormone product that has been on the market in China for a long time is basically "Jin Saizeng" of Jinsai Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Changchun High-tech.

However, since this year, the National Medical Products Administration has successively accepted the listing applications of three long-acting growth hormones, namely, Lonapegsomatropin of VisEn Medical, Yipei Growth Hormone Injection of Amoytop Biotech, and Pasireotide Injection of Novo Nordisk, which has returned to the Chinese market after delisting for one year.

Thus, the long-acting growth hormone has finally formed its own competitive pattern in China.

During the recent 9th Pharmaceutical Innovation and Investment Conference, Lu Anbang, the director and CEO of VisEn Medical, mentioned his views on the growth hormone market. He said that the number of children with short stature in China is close to 7 million, but "the starting treatment time is late and the continuous treatment time is long", and the overall penetration rate is less than 5%. This also means that the potential growth potential of the product cannot be underestimated.

VisEn Medical was established in 2018 and was incubated by Nasdaq-listed Danish biomedical enterprise Ascendis Pharma and other institutions. The latter has rich technical accumulation in the development of long-acting drug therapies. After its establishment, VisEn Medical obtained the exclusive development, production and commercialization rights of several endocrine products in China, including Lonapegsomatropin.

Before VisEn Medical introduced the product, Ascendis Pharma had conducted several Phase III clinical trials on Lonapegsomatropin for children with growth hormone deficiency. Currently, the drug has also completed the Phase III critical trial in China. The results now show that the 52-week annualized height velocity (AHV) of Lonapegsomatropin is higher than that of short-acting human growth hormone.

It is understood that in 2021 and 2022, Lonapegsomatropin has been approved by the US FDA and the European EMA successively, becoming "the first long-acting growth hormone approved for children with growth hormone deficiency in the European and American markets". Ascendis Pharma's financial report states that in 2023, the sales of Lonapegsomatropin have reached 179 million euros (approximately 1.3 billion yuan).

In March this year, the listing application of Lonapegsomatropin in China was officially accepted. According to the prospectus of VisEn Medical, the product is expected to be approved in 2025. At that time, will the excellent performance in the overseas market be "repeated" in China?

Currently, an issue that cannot be ignored is that although the growth hormone is a prescription drug, its inherent consumer attributes also determine the complexity of its market promotion. For a long time, the main market characteristic is that patients obtain prescriptions in the hospital and purchase the drug at their own expense outside the hospital. According to the calculation of the Frost & Sullivan report, the sales ratio of the growth hormone in the hospital and outside the hospital is approximately three to seven.

Therefore, channel competition may be the primary problem for the latecomers of the long-acting growth hormone.

In the early years, industry pioneers have laid the foundation for the social promotion of the growth hormone through continuous expert popularization and other forms, and the social "pursuit of height" awareness has basically been formed; and the sales channels of the growth hormone have been expanded through forms such as cooperation with children's hospitals and pediatric clinics.

For long-acting growth hormone companies such as VisEn Medical that are "waiting in line for approval", the cost of market education may be saved, but the pressure of channel competition may be greater.

This may also be the reason why various preparations have already begun although the product has not yet been officially launched. In August this year, VisEn Medical has already reached a cooperation with United Family Healthcare, a leading private hospital in China; during the China International Import Expo in November, VisEn Medical announced a distribution cooperation with Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding Co., Ltd.

In Lu Anbang's view, the number of competitors of the long-acting growth hormone is limited, so the degree of market congestion is relatively low. This also means that the listing progress may become the key to the competition of various enterprises in the future.