HONG KONG – Looking to tap into the drastically underserviced market for diabetes treatments in China, biopharma company Uni-Bio Science Group plans to develop and introduce new diabetes drugs by partnering with a local CRO.

The Hong Kong-listed small-molecule drugmaker entered a multiple-drug co-development agreement with China's Beijing Sun-Novo Pharmaceutical Research Co. Ltd. to extend Sun-Novo's current research and development capabilities in oral diabetes drug development. Through its cooperation with Sun-Novo, Uni-Bio aims to become an industry leader in diabetes management.

"Diabetes will be one of the largest burdens to the Chinese health care system because of the rise of the middle-class, aging population and improved standard of living," Kingsley Leung, Uni-Bio Science's executive director, told BioWorld Asia.

Recent statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest China is home to one of every three adult diabetes patients around the world, despite accounting for a little less than a fifth of the global population. The WHO warned that without urgent action, the number of patients in China would jump to 150 million by 2040, up from around 115 million.

With that market in mind, Uni-Bio and Sun-Novo have set out to develop a pipeline of diabetes products. Their first co-development project is focused on acarbose tablets for treatment of type 2 diabetes. The plan is to start development early next year and launch the product in the China market around 2020 or 2021.

"We want to focus on type 2 diabetes treatment, an emerging and increasingly important diabetes treatment in China," Leung explained.

As China's middle-class population grows and more people are lifted out of poverty, new issues are emerging, including the popularization of diets that are too high in sugar and fat. A fiercely competitive work culture also often leads to overtime work, which in turn causes a lack of exercise and more sedentary lifestyles. Those factors are driving an increase in obesity rates, which puts people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

More than one-third of adults in China are overweight. The number of overweight children has also risen from less than 3 percent overall in 1985 to around 10 percent of girls and 20 percent of boys in 2010, according to the WHO.

"The number of type 2 diabetes cases in China has exploded in the last couple of decades. In 1980, less than 5 percent of Chinese men had diabetes. Now, more than 10 percent do. This increase has been largely driven by unhealthy lifestyles," said Bernhard Schwartländer, a WHO representative in China.

Currently, Uni-Bio has one existing drug for treatment of type 2 diabetes, mitiglinide, which already received approval from the CFDA.

"Mitiglinide and acarbose have different mechanisms of action, and hence are for treating different types of patients. For example, acarbose is useful for patients with a high carbohydrate intake, while mitiglinide is useful for controlling the after-meal glucose level [postprandial hyperglycemia]," said Leung. "As the disease progresses, drugs with different mechanisms of actions will be needed, or a combination therapy can be adopted. Acarbose cannot replace mitiglinide, and vice versa."

The demand for diabetes pharmaceuticals in China will be robust in the long term. According to a report from UBS, a bank, the diabetes drug market is set to grow from around $3.31 billion in 2014 to $18.55 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.2 percent.

"Critically, there remains substantial room for diabetes pharmaceutical sales to grow in the China market," noted BMI Research, an intelligence provider with Fitch Group. "A study of the oral antidiabetic drug therapy in China also highlighted the fact that novel treatments have yet to fully penetrate the market."

Among 9,872 patients surveyed in the study, sulfonylureas and metformin were the most common drugs used in monotherapy or combination therapies, at 43 percent and 54 percent, respectively. In contrast, dipeptidyl peptidase, or DPP-4, inhibitors only accounted for 0.8 percent of treatments, while use of sodium-glucose co-transporter 2, or SGLT2, inhibitors was not reported.

Currently, the cooperation with Sun-Novo focuses on oral diabetes drugs, said Leung. Uni-Bio will look for other opportunities in core therapeutic areas as well.

"Sun-Novo is a young and fast-growing CRO company with good reputation and influence in the industry. It has been working with extensive clients, including China's leading pharmas Livzon, Shanghai Pharma, Yangtze River Pharma and CR Double-Crane, as well as new biotech companies," said Leung. "Sun-Novo's strong research capability in chemical drug development, bioequivalence study as well as biological testing fits well with Uni-Bio's chemical drug strategy."