Five Teams Compete for World Championship as NSTC Leads 16 Startups to North America’s Premier Biotech Event

Date: May 31, 2024

The NSTC’s TTA held a pre-exhibition training camp to guide Taiwanese teams participating in the 2024 North American Biotech Exhibition. Photo/NSTC

The global biotech event, the North American Biotech Exhibition, will take place from June 3 to 6. The NSTC will lead 16 Taiwanese startups to participate, including Everfront Biotech, Suntec Medical, Trust Bio-sonics, AcroCyte Therapeutics, and CytoArm. These five teams have successfully advanced to the final round of the Start-Up Stadium competition, where they will compete for the world championship against 42 other teams from around the globe. 

The NSTC stated that Everfront, Suntec, and Aether were selected for their revolutionary drug delivery technologies, which have the potential to overcome the limitations of traditional drug delivery methods, such as ineffective treatment and damage to other tissues. Their innovations offer advantages such as precise cancer medication delivery and immune system activation.

Trust Bio-sonics is pioneering a revolutionary 3D cell culture technology based on “zero animal testing,” which can create patient-derived 3D cell models for precision medicine using a single cell. AcroCyte Therapeutics has developed a new generation of Armed T cell technology, which reduces the production time from 30 days to 10 days compared to CAR T cells, achieves 90% purity, and is non-toxic.

FaceHeart and Dot Space are part of the NSTC’s research and startup support teams, while Trust Bio-sonics and Cytoaurora are from the Hsinchu Science Park. They are all set to showcase their unique strengths and demonstrate the diverse capabilities of Taiwan’s biotech industry during the exhibition.

NSTC Director of Industry-Academia Collaboration, Tseng-Ju Hsu, noted that the NSTC integrates Taiwan’s rich academic research capabilities with its ICT industry strengths. In addition to investing in domestic industry-academia-medical R&D, the NSTC actively promotes startups on the international stage. This effort aligns with President Lai Ching-Te’s “Healthy Taiwan” initiative, combining talent and technological advantages with smart healthcare to strategically position Taiwan globally, market it worldwide, and promote biomedicine as the next trillion-dollar industry.

source: 

  1. https://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20240531000264-260210?chdtv
  2. https://www.cna.com.tw/postwrite/chi/372310

Exhibition Information:

Everfront Biotech Inc. cordially invites you to participate in the 2024 Taiwan Smart Health Gala

  • Topic: Taiwan Start Up Pitch
  • Date: June 3rd (Monday) 
  • Time: 10:15 – 11:35
  • Venue: Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina, Grand Ballroom B

Everfront Biotech Inc. cordially invites you to participate in the BIO2024 Start-up Stadium.

 

Date: June 4, 2024
Time: 2:30 – 2:40 PM
URL:  https://convention.bio.org/program/start-up-stadium
 
 
 
 
Product Highlights of Cerebraca® Wafer:

Everfront Biotech’s innovative new drug, Cerebraca® Wafer, is a precision medicine sustained-release wafer that revolutionizes the treatment of malignant brain cancer. Through multiple patented novel features, Cerebraca® Wafer has successfully addressed the challenges of treating malignant brain cancer, which is difficult to manage and prone to relapse. Chemotherapy gradually loses its effectiveness against brain cancer cells due to their drug resistance, and the high proportion of cancer stem cells further exacerbates the problem of cancer recurrence and treatment resistance. However, these issues can be addressed by the pharmacological mechanism of action of Cerebraca® Wafer. In addition, malignant brain cancer cells express PD-L1, which renders the immune system unable to kill cancer cells. The successful development of Cerebraca® Wafer has also addressed this issue. In Phase I clinical trials, Cerebraca® Wafer has demonstrated efficacy without any drug-related adverse reactions. The median or average cumulative survival of relapsed malignant brain cancer patients has reached 25-26 months, which is significantly better than existing strategies such as Gliadel® wafer implantation (6.4 months), Temodal capsules (5.8 months), or Avastin injection (9.4 months). Cerebraca® Wafer has been approved by the Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Human Research Ethics Committee of Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital for compassionate use trials. For malignant brain cancer patients who cannot undergo surgery and have tumors growing at the cervical spine, implanting Cerebraca® Wafer through a small incision has resulted in tumor shrinkage. In addition, combining Cerebraca® Wafer with cytokine-induced killer cells (CIK) for treatment can achieve a recurrence-free survival period of more than 40 months. With its outstanding clinical results, Everfront Biotech Inc. is actively seeking partners to jointly develop this new drug and help more malignant brain cancer patients.

Introduction to Everfront Biotech Inc.:

Everfront Biotech Inc. targets unmet medical needs by developing orphan drugs to treat some of the world’s most lethal diseases. Founded in 2010, the company focuses on the research and development of new drugs, emphasizing the screening of potential small molecules and advancing them to clinical trials. From initial product development to preclinical research, chemical manufacturing and control, new drug clinical trial applications, clinical trial planning, and execution, all these tasks are led by the company’s dedicated team.

Currently, Everfront has three clinical trials approved in the United States and Taiwan, including Cerebraca® Wafer (for malignant brain tumors)HK-001 (for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), and EF-009 (for pancreatic cancer).

Everfront Biotech actively aligns with national new drug development policies. Both Cerebraca® Wafer and HK-001 have received biotech new drug certification. The company also actively participates in national projects, with three special projects and one SBIR project receiving funding from the Ministry of Economic Affairs. 

Development Pipeline