PHC and JCR Jointly Develop Smartphone Application for Dosing Management of Growth Hormone Treatment and Cooperate with Clinical Research

TOKYO, March 4, 2019 ― PHC Corporation (hereafter PHC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of PHC Holdings Corporation (headquarters: Tokyo, Japan), and JCR Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. (headquarters: Ashiya, Hyogo, Japan. Chairman and President: Shin Ashida; hereafter JCR) announce a jointly-developed dedicated smartphone app for motorized drug delivery devices for growth hormone products, called “GROWJECTOR® L” which was launched in January 2017 for the Japan market only. The app will be provided to clinical research which started this February under principal researcher Dr. Tatsuhiko Urakami of the Nihon University Hospital.

“GROWJECTOR® L” is a dedicated motorized drug delivery device manufactured and sold by PHC, for “GROWJECT® subcutaneous 6mg and 12mg (*1)” recombinant human growth hormone products manufactured and sold by JCR. The jointly-developed app for this product allows checking dosing history via smartphone by sending dosing data stored in “GROWJECTOR® L.” In addition, the app can create and indicate growth curves of height and weight and allows children to enjoy “fun” functions (*2) during treatment, reducing the tension children may experience with treatment and injections. This also helps those administering the treatment reduce the burden of injecting medicines and promotes dosing adherence.(*3)

Growth hormone therapies may cause fear and evoke strong feelings among children being treated as well as place a burden on those administering the therapies so there is concern regarding a drop in dosing adherence and the adverse effects of QOL for children. The clinical research objectives are to analyze dosing adherence data when the app is used, examine the causes of dosing compliance decrease for the growth hormone treatment and to gather information needed to commercialize the app by analyzing logged access data and others.