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.
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