Vaccine maker Adimmune Corp (國光生技) yesterday inked a cooperation agreement with UMN Pharma Inc, giving it access to the Japanese firm’s technology, which could help shorten its vaccine manufacturing process to two months from six months.
Under the agreement, Adimmune will also be allowed to file for clinical trial application of UMN Pharma’s flu vaccines and to sell them in China and Taiwan, the Taiwanese firm said.
“We make vaccines by injecting live viruses into fertilized chicken eggs, but in the future we can consign the process to UMN Pharma and take advantage of their technology of baculovirus expression vector system [BEVS],” Adimmune president Liu Chung-cheng (留忠正) said at a press conference.
Photo: Chen Yung-chi, Taipei Times
In the future, Adimmune chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) said the company may start part of its vaccine manufacturing process in Japan, but will still use its Taiwanese factory for the final process.
UMN Pharma has the world’s largest BEVS capacity, after the company invested ¥10 billion (US$1.1 billion) to build a factory in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, company chairman and CEO Tatsuyoshi Hirano told the press conference.
UMN Pharma’s new factory started operating in May and can produce 10 million vials of vaccines a year, Hirano said, adding that the factory would continue expanding capacity.
The Japanese firm acquired BEVS technology from US-based drug maker Protein Sciences Corp, which gave UMN Pharma the exclusive rights to use it to manufacture drugs in Asia. The technology helps save costs, because it boosts production of the proteins required to produce vaccines.
Tokyo-listed UMN Pharma has a market value of ¥32.7 billion, with three flu vaccines in its new drug pipeline, according to First Capital Management Inc (第一金投顧).
Yesterday’s deal makes Adimmune the only strategic partner of UMN Pharma on either side of the Taiwan Strait, and will enable it to produce a larger stock of flu vaccines within a short period should an outbreak occur, the company said.
Adimmune reported losses of NT$309.78 million (US$10.5 million), or NT$1.68 per share, during the first half of the year, according to its Taiwan Stock Exchange filing.
First Capital forecast that Addimune’s losses would shrink to NT$1.26 per share next year, after receiving the green light to sell vaccines in China and adjuvant of hepatitis A in Europe.
It further expects the company to post a profit of NT$3.18 per share in 2015, with vaccine sales in China reaching 1.5 million vials.
Adimmune shares rose 6.15 percent yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX, which climbed 0.52 percent.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by