The line between human medicine and pet medicine is disappearing fast — and a growing list of biotech and pharmaceutical companies are the ones erasing it.
Across South Korea and beyond, drugmakers are increasingly adapting breakthroughs originally developed for people into treatments for companion animals. What started with basic vaccines and antibiotics has expanded into an entirely new category: prescription medicines for chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, arthritis, and dementia in pets.
Who’s Leading This Shift
A cluster of Korean companies is already turning this trend into real products. Seoul-based Daewoong Pet has launched ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) tablets to treat liver disease in animals. HK inno.N, based in North Chungcheong, has applied for sales approval of a canine atopic dermatitis treatment.
Gyeonggi-based GNT Pharma launched Geda Cure in 2021, a treatment for canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome — essentially dog dementia — which has already exceeded 10 billion won ($6.81 million) in cumulative sales within just a year and a half. The company is now working on additional neurological disorder therapies.
Meanwhile, Daejeon-based Ensol Biosciences is developing an osteoarthritis treatment for companion animals, and South Jeolla’s Vaxcell Bio is working on an immune cell-based cancer therapy specifically for dogs.
Why Companies Are Making This Leap
According to an industry source cited in the reporting, the logic behind this pivot is straightforward: humans and companion animals share similar living environments and disease patterns, meaning clinical knowledge gained treating pets can even flow back to support human drug research — a two-way relationship that’s making the category increasingly attractive to biopharmaceutical firms.
The Global Companies Racing on Pet Obesity
Nowhere is the competition heating up faster than in obesity treatment. As pet obesity climbs worldwide, companies are racing to develop GLP-1-based drugs specifically for animals — the same drug class behind the human weight-loss boom.
Massachusetts-based Akston Biosciences is developing AKS-562c, a GLP-1-based obesity treatment designed specifically for cats, currently in clinical trials with Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. San Francisco-based Okava Pharmaceuticals is targeting the same space with OKV-119, a long-acting GLP-1 subcutaneous implant for both obesity and diabetes.
Established Players Already on the Market
Some of these human-to-pet drug adaptations aren’t hypothetical anymore — they’re already sitting on veterinary clinic shelves. Zoetis, the world’s largest animal health company, launched Librela for canine osteoarthritis and Solensia for feline osteoarthritis back in 2020. Both are antibody therapies that originated in human medicine research before being successfully adapted for veterinary use.
The Company Chasing Something Even Bigger: Pet Aging Itself
Perhaps the most ambitious company in this space isn’t just targeting disease — it’s targeting aging. U.S. biotech firm Loyal is developing LOY-002, an oral drug candidate designed to extend healthy lifespan in older dogs. The drug recently received the U.S. FDA’s acknowledgment of its safety, allowing Loyal to move forward in the agency’s conditional approval process — a significant milestone for a drug attempting something genuinely new in veterinary science.
The Numbers Behind the Boom
This wave of company activity is being driven by real demographic shifts. In South Korea, 29.2 percent of households owned companion animals in 2025, up from 25.4 percent in 2022, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Globally, pet obesity has surged too — the share of overweight pet dogs in the US rose from 43 percent in 2010 to 59 percent in 2022, while overweight cats climbed from 53 percent to 61 percent over the same period, per the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention.
Market research firm Fortune Business Insights projects the global pet pharmaceuticals market will grow from $21.38 billion this year to $38.87 billion by 2034 — a clear signal that more companies will keep entering this space in the years ahead.
What This Means for Pet Owners
As one industry source put it, demand for treating chronic disease in pets keeps growing, but there’s still a real shortage of medicines built specifically around weight-based dosing, long-term safety, and ease of administration. That gap is exactly where this new wave of companies — from Korean biotech startups to major global players like Zoetis and Loyal — is now racing to compete.
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