Taiwan’s MegaPro Biomedical Co (巨生生醫) and China Chemical & Pharmaceutical Co (CCPC, 中國化學製藥) yesterday announced that they have set up a joint venture with China’s Wellbridge Biotech Ltd (蘇州瑋琪) focusing on the development of drugs in inhalation dosage forms.
MegaPro said it would invest about US$600,000 for a 30 percent stake in the joint venture — Trium Therapeutics Co — while CCPC and Wellbridge would hold 40 percent and 30 percent respectively.
Trium’s chairman and general manager are to be appointed by CCPC and MegaPro respectively, it said.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
Trium’s main research goal is to meet pharmaceutical companies’ demand for non-invasive routes of drug administration, such as via the nasal cavity, to improve patients’ comfort and drugs’ bioavailability, MegaPro said.
MegaPro would utilize its expertise in improving drug delivery technology and develop new dosage forms on its nano-platform technology, it said.
MegaPro would also be responsible for conducting animal tests and human trials, it added.
CCPC, which operates Good Manufacturing Practice-certified pharmaceutical plants, as well as sales channels at home and abroad, would be responsible for mass production and marketing, while Wellbridge, which specializes in medical nebulizers, would provide technical information for the development of inhalation dosage forms and supply nebulizer equipment, the companies said.
“Oral dosage forms have been well-developed and widely used by generic drug manufacturing pharmaceutical companies. How to expand special treatment pathways has become the next phase of development in the pharmaceutical industry,” CCPC general manager Wu Zhi-yong (吳志庸) said in a statement.
Reports by Data Bridge Market Research Private Ltd, a professional research company, show that the global market for inhalers is expected to reach US$42.1 billion in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 5.87 percent from this year to 2027, MegaPro said.
As patients inhale the drug, its main components can be quickly absorbed by the lungs and dense blood capillaries, it said.
Trium has completed the screening of drug candidates and the preliminary animal tests, and would carry out stability tests and more animal tests, the companies said.
Spun off in 2014 from the Industrial Technology Research Institute, MegaPro focuses on developing niche nano-medicines and holds two proprietary nanotechnology platforms, with three product pipelines treating iron deficiency anemia and hepatocellular carcinoma.
MegaPro reported zero revenue for the first half of this year, while CCPC’s revenue was flat from a year earlier at NT$4.03 billion (US$135.2 million), companies’ data showed.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government should take steps to cut UK reliance on semiconductors from Taiwan because of the threat posed by China, a draft strategy said. Chinese interference or an invasion of Taiwan would threaten Britain’s economy, according to the unpublished strategy seen by Bloomberg. That is because it would compromise supplies to and from Taiwan, which is home to more than 90 percent of the manufacturing capacity for all leading-edge chips, including the world’s pre-eminent silicon foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電). The strategy is important because semiconductors are used in everything from cellphones to cars, and shortages have
BIG SPENDERS: China’s reopening is a key ‘mega-theme’ for the sector, RBC Bank said, but it remains to be seen how much Chinese tourists will buy The European luxury sector is welcoming the end of pandemic lockdowns in China, as the return of big-spending Chinese tourists could sustain further growth. Prior to the pandemic, Chinese tourists visiting Europe were a major source of sales for luxury houses. The Chinese accounted for “a third of luxury purchases in the world and two-thirds of those purchases were made outside China”, said Joelle de Montgolfier, head of the luxury division at management consulting firm Bain & Co. Their return has led RBC Bank to revise up its growth forecast for the sector this year to 11 percent, from 7 percent previously. “China
‘IT HURTS TOO MUCH’: After talks between Blizzard and NetEase over their contract broke down, servers hosting Blizzard’s games in China were shut down Millions of Chinese gamers have lost access to World of Warcraft after a furious dispute between US title owner Activision Blizzard Inc and NetEase Inc (網易), its longtime local partner in the world’s biggest gaming market. Devotees of the popular game took to social media networks to bemoan the loss, with one posting an image of a failed connection message accompanied by crying emojis. “It really hurts my heart,” one wrote. “It hurts, it hurts too much,” another said. Massively popular worldwide, particularly in the 2000s, World of Warcraft — often abbreviated as WoW — is an online multiplayer role-playing game set in
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday accused Alphabet Inc’s Google of abusing its dominance in digital advertising, threatening to dismantle a key business at the heart of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful Internet firms. The US government said Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite, tackling a business that generated about 12 percent of Google’s revenues in 2021, but also plays a vital role in the search engine and cloud company’s overall sales. “Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the
RSS