Daewoong Pharmaceutical announced that its newly developed type 2 diabetes medication, Enblo (active ingredient: inavogliflozin), has shown significant potential to improve fatty liver conditions in diabetic patients. The company is closely tracking whether Enblo can successfully expand its therapeutic reach beyond blood sugar control to effectively manage fatty liver, a remarkably common and dangerous comorbidity in diabetes patients.
On the 9th, Daewoong Pharmaceutical reported that these clinical findings were published in Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism, a prestigious SCI-indexed international medical journal. Enblo belongs to a class of type 2 diabetes treatments known as SGLT-2 inhibitors, which work by blocking glucose reabsorption in the kidneys and promoting the excretion of excess sugar through the urine.
The study specifically assessed Enblo’s therapeutic effects on metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), a condition where metabolic imbalances trigger excessive fat accumulation in the liver. MASLD frequently accompanies type 2 diabetes, and if left untreated, it can progress to severe chronic liver diseases and cardiovascular complications. As the prevalence of MASLD continues to climb among diabetic populations, therapies that offer concurrent glycemic control and hepatic metabolism improvements are becoming increasingly vital.
Clinical Trials Reveal Marked Reduction in Liver Fat
To evaluate Enblo's efficacy, researchers conducted an integrated analysis of three distinct Phase 3 clinical trial datasets used during the drug's regulatory approval process. The analysis tracked the 24-week treatment outcomes of 587 patients with type 2 diabetes, roughly half of whom suffered from fatty liver at the baseline of the study. Hepatic fat accumulation was monitored using two validated clinical metrics: the hepatic steatosis index (HSI) and the Framingham steatosis index (FSI).
The pooled analysis demonstrated that a significantly higher proportion of patients in the Enblo group experienced reductions in fatty liver markers compared to the placebo group. Among the 75 patients in the Enblo cohort evaluable via HSI, the prevalence of fatty liver plummeted from 48.0% (36 patients) at baseline to just 16.0% (12 patients) by week 24. This indicates that approximately 67% of patients previously classified with fatty liver cleared the condition and returned to the normal range under HSI criteria. Similarly, using the FSI marker, the high-risk group dropped from 41.3% (31 patients) to 16.0% (12 patients), reflecting a 61% normalization rate.
Furthermore, Enblo demonstrated superior performance when head-to-head data was compared against dapagliflozin, an established drug within the same SGLT-2 inhibitor class. The mean reduction in HSI score was -4.51 for the Enblo group, representing a more pronounced improvement than the -3.49 drop observed in the dapagliflozin cohort.
A New Multi-Target Strategy for Diabetic Care
According to Daewoong Pharmaceutical, this study marks the first time Enblo has been clinically proven to improve fatty liver indicators in type 2 diabetes patients, outperforming a major therapeutic competitor in statistically significant metrics.
Jeong In-kyung, an endocrinology professor at Kyung Hee University Hospital at Gangdong and the paper’s corresponding author, noted the clinical weight of the study. “This research is highly meaningful as it is the first to confirm that Enblo can deliver a dual positive impact—not only managing glycemic control in type 2 diabetes patients but also actively reducing fat accumulation in the liver.”
Co-corresponding author Jung Chang-hee, an endocrinology professor at Asan Medical Center in Seoul, added, “Given that Enblo demonstrated superior improvement in key fatty liver indicators compared to an existing drug in its same class, we can look forward to Enblo playing an elevated role in future treatment strategies for patients battling MASLD.”
Park Hyung-chul, head of Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s ETC Marketing Division, emphasized the real-world value of the findings. “These results prove that Enblo provides substantial therapeutic benefits beyond standard blood sugar regulation. Because MASLD shows a high comorbidity rate of over 65% among type 2 diabetes patients, this data provides solid evidence to expand Enblo’s clinical value in real-world practice.”
