Press Release

KOHJIN Life Sciences, a Mitsubishi Corporation Group Company, announced this month that going forward, their flagship L-glutathione will be marketed by the global nutritional supplement company Jarrow Formulas, with the OPITAC™ symbol featured prominently on the label.

Jarrow Formulas® was founded in 1977 by Jarrow L. Rogovin. The company’s history began as a health food store in Los Angeles during the dawn of dietary supplements as an industry. The supplement business grew out of Jarrow’s store, as his early supplement formulations earned a reputation for being innovative and efficacious at a time when the health benefits of dietary supplements were just beginning to be recognized.

In a few short years, demand grew for the small company’s supplements. Since that time, Jarrow Formulas® has grown from a handful of products to hundreds of nutritional formulations, many of which were firsts for the dietary supplement industry. 

In 2000, Jarrow Industries Inc. was established to be the main manufacturer for Jarrow Formulas®. Jarrow Industries (located in Santa Fe Springs, CA), is a GMP-certified manufacturer and packager of dietary and nutritional supplements.

Today, Jarrow Formulas’ products are available worldwide in countries throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. From a California-based pioneer, to an internationally known premier brand with millions of consumers, Jarrow Formulas’ original goal has always remained the same:  To design superior dietary supplements that help empower individuals to take charge of their own health.

Jarrow Formulas’ commitment to innovation aligns perfectly with the history and philosophy of KOHJIN Life Sciences. This connection is an acknowledgment of the shared dedication to innovation, quality, and advancing a healthy lifestyle. It can be seen in the rebranded label for Jarrow Formulas’ Glutathione Reduced formulation.

KOHJIN’s OPITAC™ brand of refined L-glutathione (GSH) did not become the largest-selling brand of glutathione in the world by accident. To the contrary, KOHJIN first developed its proprietary process for deriving GSH in the 1960’s, and its success in Japan gave rise to its advanced research division, which has been a major contributor to the clinical world’s knowledge of glutathione’s benefits throughout the decades.

Nor was OPITAC’s rise to worldwide prominence instantaneous. It took until 2013 for KOHJIN’s years of research to pay off in the form of irrefutable, peer-reviewed evidence that orally-administered glutathione was absorbed into the system within two hours of taking it, becoming characteristically indistinguishable from naturally-occurring GSH in the body. With that landmark study it was finally confirmed that the body’s supply of this precious thiol, so important to cell health, and which declines with age and the accumulated effects of toxins and stress on the system, could be replaced with oral supplementation.

Jarrow Formulas was among the first companies outside Japan to recognize the value of orally-administered GSH. Originally marketed in Japan for its benefits to skin, glutathione imparts a healthy glow and improves tone and texture, as it helps preserve cell health*. Jarrow was familiar with these benefits, but just as significantly, glutathione’s support for sustaining health, and particularly its strength as an antioxidant and its ability to scavenge the system for free radicals and exogenous toxins.*

Recently, KOHJIN Life Sciences made the decision to give its L-glutathione a new name, OPITAC™, to better reflect its major capacities – optimizing health and arriving intact in the system to support the body’s own store of glutathione.

Jarrow Formulas’ new label serves to reaffirm these two like-minded organizations’ commitment to providing increasingly sophisticated, health-conscious consumers with the most advanced nutritional supplements available, backed by uncompromising quality, and supported with a wealth of clinically studied, peer-reviewed research.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.