Moderna Inc has refused to hand over to China the core intellectual property behind the development of its COVID-19 vaccine, leading to a collapse in negotiations on its sale in the country, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company turned down China’s request to disclose the formula for its mRNA vaccine because of commercial and safety concerns, the newspaper said, citing people involved in negotiations that took place from 2020 to last year, adding that the vaccine maker is still “eager” to sell the product to China.
The company had “given up” on its previous efforts to access the Chinese market because of Beijing’s demand that it reveal the technology as a prerequisite for its sale in the country, the report said.
Photo: Reuters
China has not approved any foreign COVID-19 vaccines and relies on several domestically developed shots.
Moderna chief medical officer Paul Burton last month said the company is keen to collaborate with China on supplying its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines to the country.
“We would certainly be very eager to collaborate with China if they felt that there was a need for a vaccine there,” Burton told a news conference. “Currently, there is no activity going on, but we’d be very open to it.”
Moderna established a subsidiary in Taiwan on Thursday last week, as the company makes efforts to collaborate with the nation’s private and public sectors, as well as academia, the subsidiary’s general manager Joyce Lee (李宜真) said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan has since early last month received four shipments of the US company’s next-generation COVID-19 vaccine targeting the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants of SARS-CoV-2, and local cities and counties began administering the doses on Sept. 24, the Central Epidemic Command Center said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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
RSS