Founded in 1984, Sepracor was originally comprised of several diverse business units. In 1989, we embarked on a strategy of developing single isomers and active metabolites of many of the world's largest selling drugs, with the objective of developing our own proprietary pipeline of pharmaceutical products. Sepracor became a publicly traded corporation in 1991, and we subsequently divested our non-pharmaceutical business units into four different companies, retaining our core pharmaceutical business.
Sepracor was built on the premise that chiral drugs could, in essence, be divided into two or more "parts" and that certain of these parts could be brought to the market as new medicines with the possibility for reduced side effects, greater potency or new indications. Sepracor was a pioneer in this area of drug development, identifying new, viable compounds. This strategy enabled Sepracor to establish itself initially by out-licensing the rights to a number of compounds to large, established pharmaceutical companies who developed and ultimately commercialized them. Some of these compounds have grown to become well-known brands in the pharmaceutical industry: ALLEGRA® brand fexofenadine HCl, CLARINEX® brand desloratadine and XYZAL®/XUSALTM brand levocetirizine.
In 2000, based on our development and commercialization success with XOPENEX® brand levalbuterol HCl Inhalation Solution, we began to focus on and devote our resources to developing and marketing our portfolio of primary care-oriented pharmaceutical candidates ourselves. Today, Sepracor has several products on the market in the U.S. that address large and growing markets that are served principally by primary care physicians and specialists, and we have, through strategic partnerships, expanded our development and commercialization opportunities worldwide.
Sepracor continues to grow and today we have more than 2,300 employees, a broad-based sales force and a robust pharmaceutical pipeline with candidates in all stages of development that are targeted toward respiratory and central nervous system disorders. As part of our future growth strategy, we expect to continue to generate new candidates from our own discovery efforts. We also expect to continue to pursue strategic corporate development and licensing opportunities, which may include in-licensing additional compounds for development and commercialization, co-development and co-promotion collaborations, consideration of appropriate merger and acquisition activities and further expansion of discovery efforts through tactical collaborations.