Kowa Pharmaceuticals America, Inc. (KPA), located in Montgomery, Alabama, is a privately owned specialty pharmaceutical company focused on delivering customer solutions for cardiovascular conditions. KPA was created in 2008 when ProEthic Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was acquired by Kowa Company, Ltd. (KCL). This acquisition represented a significant advancement toward achieving KCL’s vision of creating a global pharmaceutical organization.
KCL began as a family-owned company—a heritage that KPA preserves today with its personal approach to patient care. KPA is dedicated to maintaining agility and responsiveness to its customers’ changing environment and to the needs of patients, focusing its efforts on the acquisition, development, licensing, and marketing of cardiometabolic therapies.
KPA currently markets LIPOFEN® (fenofibrate capsules), which is indicated as an adjunctive therapy to diet to reduce elevated triglycerides (TG) and to increase high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) in adult patients with primary hypercholesterolemia or mixed dyslipidemia. It is also indicated as an adjunctive therapy to diet for the treatment of adult patients with hypertriglyceridemia. KPA has the exclusive right to market, sell, and distribute LIPOFEN in the United States through an agreement with Cipher Pharmaceuticals.
KPA recently announced the US approval of LIVALO® (pitavastatin), a fully synthetic and highly potent statin, as an adjunctive therapy to diet to reduce elevated total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), apolipoprotein B (apo B), and TG, and to increase HDL-C in adult patients with primary hyperlipidemia or mixed dyslipidemia. LIVALO has been marketed since 2003, and is currently available in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and China. In these countries, LIVALO® has been frequently prescribed as first-line therapy for a range of patients, including the elderly, patients with diabetes, and those whose treatment is complicated by concurrent disease and concomitant medications. KPA anticipates launching LIVALO in the United States in March 2010.
KCL is a privately held, multinational company headquartered in Nagoya, Japan. Established in 1894, KCL is actively engaged in various manufacturing and commercial activities in the fields of pharmaceutical, life science, information technology, textiles, machinery, and various consumer products. KCL’s pharmaceutical division is focused on cardiovascular therapeutics, with sales of the company's flagship product, LIVALO, totaling $340 million (12 percent market share) in Japan during the 2008 fiscal year and expected to exceed $500 million in the near future.
Kowa Research Institute, Inc. (KRI), a division of KCL located in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, is responsible for the clinical development of drug candidates in the United States for KCL. KRI was established in California in 1997 and began operations at its current location in 2003.
For more information about Kowa, please visit www.kowapharma.com.
