Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. is a Japanese pharmaceutical company headquartered in Tokyo, founded in 1925 and one of Japan's major drug developers. In 2002 the Swiss drugmaker Roche, already live in this atlas, acquired majority ownership of Chugai in a strategic alliance that let Chugai continue operating with significant independence and its own separate listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, rather than being fully absorbed into Roche. Chugai has developed a number of internationally significant medicines under this arrangement, including tocilizumab, marketed as Actemra, an antibody drug originally developed for rheumatoid arthritis that was later used to treat severe complications of COVID-19, and the company remains a leading contributor to Roche's global biologics pipeline.