Taiwan has a good chance to play an important role in the biotechnology industry if the nation can effectively integrate its medical research infrastructure with its strengths in the electronics and information industries, an Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) official said in Taipei yesterday.
By doing so, it could attract international companies to set up bioinformatics research and development (R&D) centers in Taiwan, Hsieh Liang-han (謝良翰), general director of ITRI’s international business center told the Taipei Times yesterday.
“Taiwan’s strength lies in its information and communications technology [ICT] industry and basic research. I believe if the nation’s biotechnology industry can integrate with the ICT industry, it will begin to develop at a faster pace,” Hsieh said at the sidelines of the 2008 APEC Biotechnology Conference organized by the ITRI.
What Taiwan lacks now in the field of biotechnology is the “link” in the industry value chain, Hsieh said.
For example, Taiwan may be strong in the basic research of liver disease, but the local biotech industry is still in the development stage, Hsieh said.
Stanley Chang (張世忠), chairman of the Taipei-based Medigen Biotechnology Corp (基亞生物科技), who was invited to give a speech at the conference, agreed.
“Taiwan is strong in a couple of research topics in the world, with liver cancer being our strongest point. Integrating Taiwan’s precision equipment and biotechnology is a new direction that we can seriously consider,” Chang told the Taipei Times yesterday after his speech.
To attract international companies, such as the Switzerland-based pharmaceutical companies Novartis International AG and Roche Applied Science to set up their R&D centers in Taiwan, Hsieh said the government would have to first set up a few centers of excellence, such as in liver disease.
The conference took place at the Taipei International Convention Center yesterday, with “adding value to biomedical translational medicine” being its main theme. Hsieh said ITRI’s international business center would focus on linking the laboratory and the “patient’s bedside” this year — often referred to as “bench to bedside” — and encouraging transregional cooperation.
Biotech experts from seven foreign countries were invited by ITRI to share their experiences and national policies regarding translational medicine at the conference yesterday, in an effort to foster cross-regional interaction and translational medicine collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS