EirGenix Inc (台康生技), a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) and biosimilars maker, on Tuesday last week opened a state-of-the-art protein production facility at the Hsinchu Biomedical Park that it said would boost its CDMO capabilities.
The facility has one production line equipped with two 2,000 liter single-use bioreactors, but there is room to fit a total of two production lines of three 2,000 liter bioreactors each, EirGenix said.
Mass production tests are scheduled for March, the company said.
When both production lines are ready, the company would have annual protein drug output of 1,000kg to support its goals of fully localizing production.
The added capacity would boost EirGenix’s own proprietary drug development, including EG12014, its breast cancer drug that is a biosimilar to trastuzumab, which in May last year gained phase III clinical trial approval, as well as its late-stage CDMO business, company president and CEO Liu Lee-cheng (劉理成) said.
The company on Tuesday inked a three-way partnership with parent company Formosa Laboratories Inc (台耀化學) and Spain’s Oncomatryx Biopharma SL to develop an antibody drug conjugate to treat pancreatic cancer.
It has enrolled 13 out of 800 patients required for the EG12014 trial and expects to achieve full enrollment by the end of this year, Liu said, adding that final studies on the drug would be completed before next year and it should gain marketing approval in 2021 or 2022.
Founded in 2012, the company is one of the few Taiwanese CDMO service providers that has completed more than 10 contracts with major international customers, Liu said, adding that its revenue and licensing income have grown 35 times and 17-fold respectively since then.
Revenue could jump to NT$500 million (US$16.22 million) this year, up from NT$280 million last year as the CDMO business is no longer capacity-constrained, EirGenix said.
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
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