Levodopa

Parkinson's disease is a common neurodegenerative disease in middle-aged and elderly people. Typical symptoms such as bradykinesia and resting tremor seriously affect the quality of life of patients, while levodopa is currently the core basic drug for clinical management of this disease. It belongs to dopamine precursor drugs, has no pharmacological activity by itself, can cross the blood-brain barrier and be converted into dopamine under the action of dopa decarboxylase, supplements the insufficient dopamine neurotransmitter in the brain of Parkinson's disease patients, effectively improves motor symptoms, and is suitable for patients with primary Parkinson's disease at all stages. It can also be used to improve neurological symptoms caused by hepatic encephalopathy, and is recognized as the gold standard drug in the field of Parkinson's disease treatment.

The global market size of levodopa API is stable at around USD 1.8 billion, with a steady compound annual growth rate of 3.2%, showing obvious rigid demand characteristics. In the current competitive landscape, generic drugs account for more than 90% of the market share. China and India are the world's most important API production and supply regions, with their combined production capacity accounting for more than 85% of the global total. With the acceleration of the domestic aging process, the domestic clinical demand for levodopa continues to rise. Coupled with the volume-based procurement policy promoting the increase of generic drug substitution rate, the annual growth rate of upstream API demand is stable at more than 5%.

CATO can provide a full set of impurity reference standards for levodopa API. All products meet the compliance requirements of multiple regulatory systems such as Chinese Pharmacopoeia and FDA. Core categories maintain sufficient in-stock inventory, which can quickly respond to the supply needs of pharmaceutical enterprises in the whole process of R&D, production and quality testing, and provide reliable technical and supply chain support for the compliant R&D and production of pharmaceutical enterprises.