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Daewoong's sales force takes over a cognitive therapeutic at 200 prescriptions a month
Emocog's route into Korean clinics is now a drugmaker's sales force. The three-year exclusive covers hospitals, clinics and public health centers nationwide, and the screening test that feeds the prescriptions goes with it.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Emocog said on the 22nd that it had signed a contract handing Daewoong Pharmaceutical exclusive domestic sales, marketing and commercialization of Cogthera and of Cogscreen, a digital memory test.
- The exclusive runs three years and covers domestic hospitals and clinics as well as public health centers and other government and public institutions.
- Cogthera, approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for mild cognitive impairment, passed 2,000 cumulative prescriptions in August, about 10 months after the first one was written.
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Why it matters
- constraint For three years Emocog cannot reach a Korean hospital except through another company's representative, so its domestic volume is set by where Cogthera ranks on a Daewoong call list.
- cost The recurring spend on upgrades, quality control, regulatory maintenance and patient support sits with Emocog while the physician relationship sits with Daewoong.
- decision Daewoong now has to weigh rep minutes against a product with a small prescription base, and the joint committee's annual plan is where that allocation gets revisited.
- precedent A physician-prescribed digital therapeutic now travels on the same visit as a drug. The next approved developer has a market-access route that needs no hospital sales force of its own.
Two thousand cumulative prescriptions over roughly ten months is about 200 a month [1], and the repeat figures cut the patient count below that. Thirteen percent of the first thousand plus 30% of the second thousand comes to about 430 repeats [2], which puts individual patients near 1,570 since the first prescription last October, or about 157 a month [3]. Daewoong's representatives take over that base on Oct. 1 [11].
The division of labour deserves a second read. Daewoong's tasks are the ones a drug rep does: identify new medical institutions, secure product adoption, provide product and academic information to physicians [3]. Emocog's are product supply, quality control, technical support, software upgrades, maintaining regulatory approvals and patient support programs [4]. None of those gets cheaper if the prescriptions do not come.
In the real-world data the repeat share is heading one way: 30% of the second thousand prescriptions were repeats against 13% of the first thousand [9], a shade over double [4], and 99.3% of patients in a group averaging 73 years old began training once they had a prescription [8]. "Cogthera has confirmed its potential for continued prescribing in clinical practice through more than 2,000 cumulative prescriptions, and our partnership with Daewoong Pharmaceutical has laid the foundation for nationwide expansion," said Lee Jun-young, co-chief executive of Emocog [12].
The check on Daewoong's effort is a joint committee that sets annual business plans and sales strategies and reviews institutional adoption and prescription performance on a regular basis [5]. Emocog did not disclose the financial terms or any minimum volumes [14]. "Mild cognitive impairment is an area where early detection and a multifaceted treatment approach are very important," said Lee Chang-jae, chief executive of Daewoong Pharmaceutical [13].
Cogscreen finds candidates, a physician assesses them, Cogthera gets prescribed [10], and that pathway lifts the run rate in multiples; or the two products sit mid-bag, rep minutes go to drugs with better economics, and Emocog spends three years supplying software into a channel that is not moving it. I would expect the first, largely because the repeat share rose while the base doubled [9], and a product generating one-off trials tends to show the reverse. The evidence against me would be the 30% slipping as Cogscreen widens the top of the funnel. That would make the reps a source of first prescriptions and not of courses of treatment.
What to watch
- Whether the roughly 200-a-month prescription run rate moves in multiples once Daewoong's representatives start work.
- Any later disclosure of the contract's economics, such as a revenue split, unit price or purchase minimum.
- Whether Emocog signs comparable distribution deals outside Korea, where the Daewoong exclusivity does not apply.