A top researcher credited with developing a drug to treat Pompe disease was released on NT$600,000 (US$20,000) bail late on Tuesday after being questioned in a corruption investigation.
Chen Yuan-tsong (陳垣崇), director of Academia Sinica's Institute of Biomedical Sciences, did not comment as he was leaving the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office.
Chen is suspected of transferring his patented technologies for producing genetic-based diagnostic tests to Phamigene — a biomedical company in which he serves as honorary founder — which then sold two test products to Academia Sinica through two government procurement bids for a total value of NT$15 million.
Prosecutors said Chen's wife is also a manager at the company.
Under the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法), procurement staff or supervisors are obliged to withdraw if they or their spouse, relatives by blood or by marriage within the third degree, or other relatives who live with and share the property with them, have vested interests in the procurement.
Prosecutors said Chen might have violated the act and was under investigation.
Chen's wife has also been questioned as a witness, the prosecutors added.
Academia Sinica spokesman Yeh Yih-hsiung (葉義雄) said the institute “respects and will cooperate with the prosecution's investigation.”
Local media reports have quoted Chen as saying, in his defense, that he has never paid attention to procurement and money matters and focused on conducting research.
Chen said that as the inventor of the patented genetic tests, he thought he should be in charge of their development and manufacturing to ensure efficiency. With that in mind, he said, he authorized Phamigene to commercialize the tests, according to the media reports.
Chen, 62, is a distinguished research fellow at Academia Sinica. He is best-known for his treatment, named Myozyme, for Pompe disease.
Chen's research inspired Harrison Ford's movie Extraordinary Measures.
The movie tells the story of parents who formed a biotechnology company to develop the drug to treat the rare life-threatening metabolic disorder.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching