The BIO Asia–Taiwan 2024 Exhibition held its grand opening ceremony today at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center Hall 1 (TaiNEX 1), with scale records broken once again. The exhibition features over 900 companies utilizing more than 2,200 booths, with 40 percent of the attendees being from abroad. In addition, the number of BIO One-on-one Partnering business matching meetings have increased this year by 70 percent, with more than 8,000 sessions booked.
Chairman of BIO Asia-Taiwan, Johnsee Lee, stated in his opening speech that the past year has been mixed bag for the biotechnology industry; stable in some ways, turbulent in others. Despite the downturn in the capital markets, the momentum of biotech innovation has not ceased. The theme for BIO Asia–Taiwan 2024 is ‘Global View, Asian Touch,’ with the conference component this year expanding into three major tracks – the Innovation Forum, the Investment Summit, and the Regional Cooperation Forums. Additionally and for the first time, BIO Asia–Taiwan 2024 has partnered with the Taiwan Startup World Cup (TSWC) to hold their final round of pitching at the event venue to better facilitate matchmaking between startups and investors.
Lee also emphasized that 40 percent of the professionals attending this event were from overseas, with the highest numbers coming from Japan, the United States, and South Korea. This demonstrates the continued internationalization of BIO Asia–Taiwan.
John Crowley, President of the US-headquartered Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), extended his congratulations online. BIO is the world’s largest biotechnology advocacy organization, with nearly 1,000-member companies globally. Crowley mentioned that he was particularly impressed by the innovations on display at the Taiwan Pavilion at this year’s BIO Convention, held in San Diego in June. With BIO the co-host of BIO Asia–Taiwan along with Taiwan BIO, BIO is helping lead the biotechnology revolution in Asia.
Crowley also mentioned that his two children suffer from the rare disorder Pompe disease, taking this opportunity to express his deep gratitude to Taiwan’s Academia Sinica Academician Chen Yuan-Tsong for developing Myozyme, the world’s first therapy for Pompe disease. This innovation not only saved his children’s lives but also demonstrated the strength of Taiwan’s biomedical innovation, he said.
2024 Taiwan BIO Awards Announced: 19 Companies Showcase Strength in Pharmaceuticals, Medical Technology, and Applied Biotechnology
At the opening ceremony, the 2024 Taiwan BIO Awards winners were recognized. Johnsee Lee, Taiwan BIO Chairman Chung-Hsiun Wu, Deputy Director of the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs Peili Chen, the convener of the Awards Committee/Academician of Taipei Medical University Wen-Chang Chang, and Executive Deputy Chairman of the National Science and Technology Council Chen-Kang Su presented medals to 19 winning companies.
The Hottest Trends in Global Biotech: AI Drug Development, Precision Medicine, Digital Health
Meanwhile, BIO Asia–Taiwan 2024 entered its third day. Today’s three sessions in the Innovation Forum focused on key global trends in the biomedical field: the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the pharmaceutical industry, genomics and precision medicine, and digital health. A strong lineup of industry and academic experts from around the world were invited to share their insights.
The first forum of the morning, Session 11, focused on the application of AI in the pharmaceutical field. Hosted by Ching-Yung lin, founder of Graphen Drugnomics, representatives from a number of domestic and international companies that either use AI to develop drugs, or provide AI services, shared their experiences.
Tom Diethe, Head of AstraZeneca’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence, out of Cambridge, UK, shared how AZ uses AI tools to aid drug development. Martin Akerman, Co-Founder and CTO of the American AI drug discovery company Envisagenics, introduced their technology that uses AI to identify RNA splicing errors in tumor cells to develop innovative therapeutic targets.
Thomas Evangelidis, Founder and CEO of AI/ffinity, discussed how his company uses protein NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) data combined with AI for its drug discovery process. Shu-Chen Chen, Chief Scientific Officer of AnHorn Medicines, shared how AnHorn integrates AI into the drug design and discovery process to accelerate the development of innovative protein degradation drugs. NaHyun Kim, Solution Sales Specialist at Medidata, explained how Medidata’s AI division applies AI and machine learning (AI/ML) technologies in clinical trials.
During the post-session discussion, Ching-Yung Lin mentioned that while AI has become extremely popular in the past five years, there is still much anticipation about whether AI will truly transform the pharmaceutical industry over the coming 20-30 years.
Session 12 focused was entitled ‘Advances in Genetics and Precision Medicine in Human Diseases’, and was chaired by Kang-Yuan Lee, Vice President of Taipei Medical University.
Toyomasa Katagiri, Director of Japan’s National Institutes of Biomedical Innovation, Health and Nutrition, shared his team’s development of a new mechanism for breast cancer therapy. John Jiang, Senior Director of Medical & Scientific Affairs at Illumina, discussed the application of genomic analysis in personalized cancer therapy. Kazuhiro Ito, Professor at Imperial College London, shared developments in precision respiratory medicine.
The post-discussion was chaired by Teh-Ying Chou, Vice Superintendent, Research and Development, Taipei Medical University Hospital. Sungmei Hsiung, Partner at DDT Attorneys-at-Law, specifically reminded technology developers to use patent tools to protect their research.
Held over lunch, Session 13, entitled ‘Shaping the Future of Digital Health,’ opened with talks by Chien-Cheng Tai, Senior Technical Specialist, Department of Industrial Technology, Ministry of Economic Affairs; and Eric Y. Chuang, Director of the Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories (BDL), ITRI.
Nipun Jain, Director of AstraZeneca’s Innovation and Partnerships, International Region, introduced the establishment of AstraZeneca’s A.Catalyst Network, which is dedicated to promoting innovative therapies in Asia, East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Tony Lee, Head of Sales, Google Cloud Taiwan, discussed various applications of Google AI in the healthcare field.
In the subsequent discussion, moderated by Chuang, the two speakers, along with Jing-Wei Lee, Superintendent, National Cheng Kung University Hospital; Kai-Cheng Hsu, Chief Medical Officer, Biomedical Big Data & Artificial Intelligence Technology, BDL, ITRI; and Peter Kurz, Chief Strategy Officer, QIC, explored strategies for promoting precision medicine through policies and public-private partnerships.
