Senhwa Biosciences Inc (生華科) yesterday said it has partnered with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to evaluate the efficacy of a new drug, dubbed Silmitasertib, for treatment of COVID-19.
The drug, developed by Senhwa Biosciences to treat cancers, such as bile duct cancer, medulloblastoma and pediatric brain tumor, showed promise in human tests to curb the ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus from proliferating.
“With the attribute, the drug is expected to help combat the novel coronavirus. We have not tested the drug on patients with COVID-19 in Taiwan, but the US NIH, looking forward to the drug’s efficacy, will run some trials in the US,” Senhwa Biosciences CEO Soong Tai-sen (宋台生) said by telephone.
The company would offer the drug for free to the US agency during the tests, but it is difficult to forecast when the trials would be completed, Soong said.
The New Taipei City-based firm has no intention of running human trials for COVID-19 treatment in Taiwan, as it has put all of its resources into its clinical trials on cancer treatment, but it is willing to partner with other companies and provide its drugs for free, Soong said.
The University of California San Francisco’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute last month identified 69 drugs or experimental compounds that might be effective in treating COVID-19, including the Silmitasertib, Soong said.
Silmitasertib could promote the formation of street granules by disrupting casein kinase 2, a protein kinase that performs diverse functions related to cell survival, thus preventing viruses from gaining ingredients such as nucleic acids to create a new virus, Soong said.
“Silmitasertib offers two advantages. First, its safety has been proven during our previous tests on about 300 people for cancer treatment. And second, we have about 120kg of Simitasertib in storage in the US, which would be convenient in terms of delivery to the NIH,” he said.
Given that Silmitasertib, unlike other potential new drugs under testing for COVID-19, such as remdesivir, does not directly attack the coronavirus or reduce lung damage, it is more likely to be used as a adjuvant drug, Soong said.
However, whether it would be effective and how it would be used with other medication would be determined by the NIH, Soong said.
Silmitasertib marks the only CK2 inhibitor present in clinical trials, he said.
The drug is undergoing a few human tests, including a Phase II trial for bile duct cancer in Taiwan, the US and South Korea, a Phase II clinical trial for medulloblastoma, sponsored by the National Institute of Health-Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program and the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, and a Phase I study for advanced basal cell carcinoma, it said.
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
H200 CHIPS: A source said that Nvidia has asked the Taiwanese company to begin production of additional chips and work is expected to start in the second quarter Nvidia Corp is scrambling to meet demand for its H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips from Chinese technology companies and has approached contract manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to ramp up production, sources said. Chinese technology companies have placed orders for more than 2 million H200 chips for this year, while Nvidia holds just 700,000 units in stock, two of the people said. The exact additional volume Nvidia intends to order from TSMC remains unclear, they said. A third source said that Nvidia has asked TSMC to begin production of the additional chips and work is expected to start in the second
RSS