It was the press announcement heard around the world: A potential COVID-19 vaccine from the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca PLC had not only been “tolerated” by patients, but “generated robust immune responses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in all evaluated participants.”
The project would proceed to all-important phase III trials in Brazil and South Africa to test if it actually stops infection.
For a global population that has seen its movement curtailed and its health threatened, it was a welcome dose of good news. It is also a large feather in the cap for AstraZeneca, whose chief executive officer, Pascal Soriot, is to unveil the company’s financial results for the first half of the year on Thursday.
While billions of pounds of government funding mean it will not lose out, AstraZeneca has pledged not to profit from any vaccine.
Similar pledges, and the deep uncertainties around all drug development, have raised the question of which pharma companies will come out ahead on the other side of the pandemic.
AstraZeneca’s rival GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) is usually a leader in vaccines, but it has found itself playing catch-up, as it too prepares half-year results this week.
On Monday last week, it paid £130 million (US$166.8 million) for a 10 percent stake in CureVac AG, a German biotech company working on a COVID-19 vaccine.
However, the collaboration announced as part of the deal would not see GSK work with CureVac on SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.
GSK is also working with French competitor Sanofi SA on a COVID-19 vaccine in a deal described by GSK chief executive officer Emma Walmsley as “unprecedented.”
Investor interest in the moves of vaccine makers is reaching levels rarely seen, a phenomenon also visible in the share prices of the manufacturers of potential treatments for COVID-19; witness the rocketing share price of British biotech company Synairgen after what appeared to be promising trials of an immunosuppressant drug.
That scramble is also evident in the unseemly haste of rich-world governments to elbow out possible competitors for vaccine doses.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has committed to buy £2 billion worth of doses from another German biotech, BioNTech AG and the US pharma giant Pfizer Inc. The UK is seeking to secure a supply of as many as 12 different vaccines to hedge its bets.
The huge interest in drug companies’ efforts means the pandemic does offer the pharmaceutical industry as a whole a golden opportunity: a chance to show that it can heal its customers rather than just emptying their wallets.
However, until there is a set of firm results, it would be as hard to predict the financial winners.
“Unfortunately, the human immune system is not simple — if it was we wouldn’t have made it very far,” UBS Group AG analysts said.
ASML Holding NV’s new advanced chip machines have a daunting price tag, said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), one of the Dutch company’s biggest clients. “The cost is very high,” TSMC senior vice president Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, referring to ASML’s latest system known as high-NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV). “I like the high-NA EUV’s capability, but I don’t like the sticker price,” Zhang said. ASML’s new chip machine can imprint semiconductors with lines that are just 8 nanometers thick — 1.7 times smaller than the previous generation. The machines cost 350 million euros (US$378 million)
Apple Inc has closed in on an agreement with OpenAI to use the start-up’s technology on the iPhone, part of a broader push to bring artificial intelligence (AI) features to its devices, people familiar with the matter said. The two sides have been finalizing terms for a pact to use ChatGPT features in Apple’s iOS 18, the next iPhone operating system, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. Apple also has held talks with Alphabet Inc’s Google about licensing its Gemini chatbot. Those discussions have not led to an agreement, but are ongoing. An OpenAI
INSATIABLE: Almost all AI innovators are working with the chipmaker to address the rapidly growing AI-related demand for energy-efficient computing power, the CEO said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported about 60 percent annual growth in revenue for last month, benefiting from rapidly growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing applications. Revenue last month expanded to NT$236.02 billion (US$7.28 billion), compared with NT$147.9 billion in April last year, the second-highest level in company history, TSMC said in a statement. On a monthly basis, revenue surged 20.9 percent, from NT$195.21 billion in March. As AI-related applications continue to show strong growth, TSMC expects revenue to expand about 27.6 percent year-on-year during the current quarter to between US$19.6 billion and US$20.4 billion. That would
‘FULL SUPPORT’: Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said he hopes more companies would settle in the prefecture to create an area similar to Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park The newly elected governor of Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture said he is ready to ensure wide-ranging support to woo Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to build its third Japanese chip factory there. Concerns of groundwater shortages when TSMC’s two plants begin operations in the prefecture’s Kikuyo have spurred discussions about the possibility of tapping unused dam water, Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said in an interview on Saturday. While Kimura said talks about a third plant have yet to occur, Bloomberg had reported TSMC is already considering its third Japanese fab — also in Kumamoto — which would make more advanced chips. “We are