Vaccine maker Adimmune Corp (國光生技) said it expects to turn a profit this year, thanks to improved sales of its quadrivalent flu vaccine, while pharmaceutical companies SynCore Biotechnology Co Ltd (杏國新藥) and EirGenix Inc (台康生技) gave an upbeat outlook regarding phase III clinical trails of new drugs.
The number of quadrivalent flu vaccines sold to the government is expected to total 4.1 million doses this year, generating revenue of NT$984 million (US$31.65 million), Adimmune spokesperson Pan Fei (潘飛) told the Taipei Times on the sidelines of the BIO Asia-Taiwan International Conference and Exhibition on Thursday.
Adimmune would receive the revenue in the fourth quarter, which would help the company turn a profit, as it would be higher than the NT$822 million in revenue it posted for the whole of last year, Pan said.
The company expects to gain market approval for its flu vaccine in Thailand by the end of this year, while it is still waiting for European regulators to complete their review of the vaccine, Pan said, adding that a phase III trial is being conducted in China
SynCore, a new subsidiary of Sinphar Group (杏輝醫藥集團), has seen the phase III clinical trials of its new pancreatic cancer drug SB05PC progress smoothly in seven nations including Taiwan, group chairman Tim Lee (李志文) said.
“So far, no enrolled patient has had serious side effects after taking SB05PC, although some of them felt sightly cold when given an injection,” Lee said. “No one has dropped out of the trial. This is rarely seen among new drug trails.”
SB05PC is expected to prevent the formation of new tumor blood vessels and inhibit tumor growth, as it can attack the activated endothelial cells, thus targeting the blood supply to tumors without affecting healthy tissue, Lee said.
The company cannot market its drug until gaining marketing approval from regulators, but if everything progresses well, it would apply to provide its drug to more patients who have exhausted commonly prescribed first-line chemotherapy treatments, Lee said.
SynCore would begin a phase III clinical trial of SB05PC as a first-line treatment in China by the end of this year, with 266 patients to be enrolled, Syncore general manager Su Muh-hwan (蘇慕寰) said.
SB05PC is expected to produce an overall survival period of seven months, exceeding the average overall survival period of four months, Su said, adding that overall survival is the length of time from the start of treatment to the death of the patient.
EirGenix Inc (台康生技) said it has enrolled 160 patients globally for the 800-person phase III trial of its breast cancer drug EG12014 and expects to complete the trial by the third quarter next year, vice president Chang Chih-jung (張志榮) said.
EG12014 is a biosimilar of trastuzumab, a monoclonal antibody sold by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Holding AG under the brand Herceptin.
As the company is conducting a blind study, it will not know how effective EG12014 is until the trial is complete, Chang said, adding that it expects to gain the marketing approval for the drug at the end of 2021 at the earliest.
EirGenix reported NT$230 million in cumulative revenue for the first six months, up 56 percent year-on-year, on the back of stably rising revenue from its contract development and manufacturing organization, he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”