REGiMMUNE Ltd (瑞格國際生技) yesterday inked an agreement with CTBC Securities Co (中國信託證券) as part of its plans for an initial public offering (IPO) by 2021.
The Tokyo-based Japanese biopharmaceutical company, which focuses on immunotherapies for rare diseases, cancer and debilitating disorders, was founded in 2006.
It has decided to restructure itself and move its headquarters to Taiwan, as there is more young talent here, chief executive officer Kenzo Kosuda told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Huang Pao-hui, Taipei times
The company recruited five employees after establishing a research center in Nangang Biotech Incubation Center (南港生技育成中心), and is looking to hire more for the development of its new antibody drugs RGI-AB01 and RGI-AB02, Kosuda said.
“In Japan, young graduates tend to look for lifetime employment at big companies, and seldom show interest in small ones like us, but Taiwanese are willing to take part in the development of small or medium-sized firms, and they are qualified and capable,” Kosuda said.
The company had considered launching its IPO in China or South Korea, but chose Taiwan, as it has transparent regulations governing financial activities, he said.
In addition, given the good relations between Taiwan and Japan, the company expects smooth cooperation between experts, regulators and research agencies in the two nations, he said.
“Taiwan is the gateway for us to expand to other Asian markets,” Kosuda said.
The company plans to list on the Taipei Exchange or the Taiwan Stock Exchange, depending on its revenue or net value in 2021, CTBC Securities senior vice president Peng Fang-ying (彭芳英) told the Taipei Times.
Working on ways to harness a person’s immune system to achieve anti-tumor immune responses, REGiMMUNE developed RGI-2001 to ameliorate graft versus host disease following the receipt of transplanted tissue from a genetically different person, the company said.
While RGI-2001 has been well tolerated by six patients in phase 1 clinical studies, in the phase 2a trial some patients treated with RGI-2001 saw a marked increased in the number of regulatory T-cells, a critical cell subset which can modulate the human body’s immune response, it said.
The company has gained approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct a phase-2b trial next month and plans to enroll 50 patients, Kosuda said.
The trial is expected to be completed by 2022, he said.
Whether a phase-3 trial will be conducted depends on the results of the phase-2b trial and the FDA, he added.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to