Nabota: What It Is, and How to Source It Authentically

Nabota is Daewoong Pharmaceutical's botulinum toxin type A, a prescription-only injectable first licensed in Korea on 29 November 2013. It is one of the three Korean toxins a sourcing buyer meets first, alongside INNOTOX and Botulax, and it was the first of them to reach the United States on its own approval, sold there under a different name. This profile covers what Nabota is, how it appears in the Korean drug register, where it sits among the Korean options, and how to verify that a specific vial is genuine.

The frame here is sourcing, not treatment. Nabota is a prescription product for administration by trained professionals, and this piece describes what it is and how to source it authentically; it does not describe dosing, administration, or expected results, which are clinical questions for the treating clinician and outside what a distributor can responsibly speak to.

What Nabota is

Nabota is a botulinum toxin type A made by Daewoong Pharmaceutical, one of Korea's larger pharmaceutical companies, and it is supplied as a vacuum-dried powder that is reconstituted before use rather than as a pre-mixed liquid. That powder format is the one most botulinum toxins have used for decades, and it is worth registering early because it quietly shapes everything downstream of the factory. A dried vial is stable in a particular way, it ships and stores under specific conditions, and the reconstitution step happens at the clinic rather than on the production line, which is part of why the physical state of a genuine vial is itself a thing worth checking.

Like every aesthetic toxin, Nabota is a neuromodulator and a prescription drug, not a cosmetic, and it is regulated as a drug in the markets that regulate it. In Korea it is approved and marketed under the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS), which places it inside the country's drug framework along with the manufacturing certification, license-holder, and traceability requirements that come with that status. None of this is unusual on its own; the three main Korean toxins all share that regulatory baseline, and on the molecule alone Nabota is one powder-format type A among several.

What sets Nabota apart on a sourcing map, then, is less about the molecule and more about its regulatory path abroad. Read purely as a product, it sits comfortably beside its peers. Read as a sourcing case, it was the first Korean toxin to gain a second identity in a major Western market, which is where the next section picks up and where most of the practical nuance lives.

Nabota in the Korean drug register

In the Korean drug register Nabota is four separate filings, one for each vial size, and all four are held by Daewoong Pharmaceutical. The first, for the 100 unit vial, was granted on 29 November 2013. The 50 and 200 unit vials followed in 2015 and the 150 unit vial in 2016. All four are live, all four are prescription-only medicines, and none of them names a contract manufacturer, so the licence holder on file is also the maker on file.

Two more fields are useful to someone holding a carton. The register describes what is in the vial: a white or pale yellow vacuum-dried solid in a colourless, transparent vial, with human serum albumin and sodium chloride listed alongside the toxin. (The 200 unit filing's description, revised in April 2023, says dried rather than vacuum-dried.) The register also lists two barcodes against each filing, so a barcode printed on a Korean-market Nabota box can be checked against the ones on file for that vial size, using the method in the barcode on a Korean injectable carton, checked against its licence. For a filing-by-filing comparison with another Korean toxin, see LIZTOX vs Nabota.

The Jeuveau connection

Nabota is the same product that is marketed in the United States as Jeuveau, where the FDA approved it in 2019 for the temporary improvement of glabellar lines, under the nonproprietary name prabotulinumtoxinA.¹ That approval is genuinely unusual in context. Most Korean toxins are not FDA-approved for aesthetic use, so Nabota's arrival in the United States, through a partner brand, gave it a distinct and cleared identity in a market where most of its domestic peers still do not have one. For anyone mapping the category, it was the first Korean type A to clear a major Western regulator, and Hugel's toxin followed it in 2024 as Letybo.

The nuance that matters for sourcing sits exactly there, and it is easy to get wrong. The U.S.-approved Jeuveau and the Korean-market Nabota are distinct regulatory products for distinct markets, even though they trace to the same manufacturer and the same toxin. A vial of Korean-market Nabota is not a U.S.-approved product simply because a related brand is approved in the United States, because approval attaches to a specific product registered for a specific market, not to a molecule or a maker. Reading approval across from one brand to another is the kind of shortcut that turns a compliance question into a compliance problem, and it is worth naming plainly before it becomes an assumption.

Where Nabota sits among the Korean toxins

The neutral way to place the Korean toxins side by side is by maker and formulation rather than by claimed effect, because effect is a clinical matter while maker and format are checkable facts on the carton. The three names a sourcing buyer meets most often are Nabota, INNOTOX, and Botulax, each from a different Korean manufacturer, and the cleanest single axis to separate them on is how the product is actually presented in the vial.

The clearest neutral split is formulation. Nabota and Botulax are dried powders reconstituted before use (Nabota vacuum-dried, Botulax freeze-dried), while INNOTOX is supplied as a ready-to-use liquid, and that difference shows up both in handling and in what a genuine vial should physically look like. That second consequence doubles as a verification cue: a Nabota that appears pre-mixed, or a liquid sold under a brand that only makes powder, is an internal contradiction and a reason to stop before going further.

None of this ranks the three against each other, and it is not meant to. It is a way to read the shelf by facts a buyer can confirm rather than by claims a buyer cannot. For the liquid option in depth, see our profile of INNOTOX and how to source it authentically, and for the category overview and the full stocked range the Botulinum Toxins guide.

How to source an authentic Nabota

Because a toxin's safety and value depend entirely on it being the genuine, correctly handled product, and because counterfeits and parallel-imported stock are a documented risk in this category, verification is best treated as a chain of checkable details rather than a single glance. No one feature proves authenticity on its own, since a hologram can be imitated and a lot number can be copied onto a box, but the whole chain is hard to fake at once. For Nabota specifically, that chain runs like this:

• An intact, tamper-evident holographic seal, and a QR or DataMatrix code that resolves to an official manufacturer page rather than a dead link or a generic site.
• Korean MFDS serialization, a GS1 DataMatrix code encoding the product identifier, serial number, lot, and expiry, which reflects the regulatory reality behind genuine packaging.
• A lot number and expiration printed on the vial that match the carton exactly.
• MFDS approval and KGMP manufacturing certification, with a designated Korea license holder standing behind the product.
• Maintained cold chain, since botulinum toxin is temperature sensitive, at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius from factory to clinic.
• A documented purchase from an authorized channel; untraceable origin or unusual pricing are reasons to stop.

Two of these deserve extra weight for a powder toxin like Nabota. Cold chain matters because botulinum toxin is a temperature-sensitive protein, so a vial that broke its 2 to 8 degrees Celsius handling somewhere in transit is functionally different from the one described on its label, even when the box itself is genuine. Provenance matters because a documented, authorized purchase path is the single most reliable signal in the whole list, and its absence, in the form of untraceable origin or a price well below the market floor, is usually the first thing wrong with a lot. For the full toxin-specific method, see how to verify an authentic Korean botulinum toxin, and for injectables broadly, how to distinguish authentic Korean injectables from counterfeits.

Where KSTATION fits

KSTATION does not promise what any toxin will do for a patient, because that is a clinical judgment for the treating professional and not something a distributor is positioned to make. What a sourcing platform can genuinely stand behind is narrower and more useful: sourcing genuine products through official channels and keeping that provenance traceable, with cold-chain handling for temperature-sensitive toxins and compliant shipping for licensed professionals. That is the one variable that actually decides whether the vial in a clinician's hand is the same one the manufacturer released.

The stocked Nabota options, NABOTA 100 Units, NABOTA 150 Units and NABOTA 200 Units, sit within the wider botulinum toxins range, all intended for use by trained professionals. Which one suits a given practice, and whether it is cleared for a given market, stays a clinical and regulatory question rather than a checkout one.

Frequently asked questions

Disclaimer. This article is general educational information, not medical advice, and describes a product and how to source it rather than what it will do for an individual. Botulinum toxins are prescription products for administration by trained and licensed professionals; this page does not describe dosing or administration. Regulatory status and approvals vary by country and change over time; confirm current status with the relevant authority.