At the beginning of the new year, let us review important news of 2015 in the biotech industries of Taiwan and the world.
 

January

President Obama of the US proposed the Precision Medicine Initiative, a 215 million USD medical program, which, in the short run, will offer more effective therapies to cancer patients, and, in the long run, will support outcome predictions of many more diseases.  The proposal is expected to drive a new wave of enthusiasms for genetic diagnosis in the world.
 

February

As of the end of 2014, the biotech industry investing arm of the National Development Fund, Legislative Yuan of Taiwan, has invested in 13 biotech companies, six of which have gone public, namely, Genovate, Mycenax, TaiGen, Adimmune, PharmaEngine, and Scinopharm.  These investments have resulted in a remarkable increase of over ten billion TWD for the account value of the fund.
 

March

Zarxio is a biosimilar drug developed by the well known American manufacturer of generic drugs – Sandoz. The patent of its index drug, Neupogen by Amgen, expired in 2013. Sandoz applied to the US FDA for market approval of Zarxio in July, 2014, and was granted permission in March, 2015. It is the first biosimilar drug that goes on market in the US.
 

April

The Polaris Group, which was founded in the US in 2006 and owns hundreds of patents for protein-targeting drugs, has decided to register the firm in Taiwan. Its anti-cancer technology platform, ADI-PEG 20, has gone through 11 clinical trials in the world, with another 11 tests under going. ADI-PEG 20 is expected to become an international protein new drug by Chinese.
 

May

According to a Bloomberg news report, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) of the People's Republic of China is conducting investigations of General Electric Co. and Royal Philips N.V and Siemens AG, on suspected hospital bribery and market monopoly. Currently, three quarters of the Chinese medical equipment market depend on imports, and the government is actively promoting the hospitals to use domestically manufactured counterparts. Upon breaking of the news, the SAIC has issued a written statement in denial of the investigations.
 

June

An outbreak of MERS occurred in South Korea in May, 2015. Within a month, it resulted in over one hundred deaths in the country, and panics in Asian regions. Experts attribute the causes of the rapid spreading pandemic in South Korea to insufficient knowledge of MERS by the disease control agency, and incomplete practice of self-isolation by the patients.
 

July

The WTO announced that a new vaccine named rVSV-ZEBOV, which can prevent 100% the dreadful Ebola virus disease (EVD) has been co-developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and Merck & Co.
 

August

A subsidiary biotech company, Bioepis, of the international electronics giant Samsung will soon go public on Nasdaq, with an estimated market value of 6.76 billion USD. The main focus of Samsung Bioepis is on the development and production of biosimilar drugs. Six drugs are currently under development. Going public in the US is expected to foster the growth of Samsung's biosimilar drug market.
 

September

The global leading drug company Pifzer has acquired the company that produces the Botox formulation drug, Allergan, at a price of 160 billion USD. The merger and acquisition (M&A) is the largest in the history of pharmaceutical industry. However, even more notable is that the case is a reverse M&A, which will effect in tax avoidances through a change in the registration of Pifzer. President Obama of the US openly criticized the transaction as both unpatriotic and destructive to the financial environment. It is estimated that billions of tax dollars to the US federal government will be lost each year.
 

October

The laureates for the 2015 Nobel Award in medicine have been announced to be William C. Campbell of Ireland, Satoshi Omura of Japan and Tu Youyou of China, on their discoveries of avermectin and Artemisinin for the treatment of parasites and malaria, respectively. These drugs have greatly benefited numerous people in poorly developed areas of the world, as well as raised the importance of applying traditional Chinese medicine in modern medicine.
 

November

Immediately after the pancreatic cancer new drug PEP02 developed by PharmaEngine (4162-TW) was approved by TFDA of Taiwan, it is announced that the licensing partner of the drug, Merrimack of USA (NASDAQ : MACK) has received notification from the US FDA for drug permission. PEP02 won the Taipei Biotech awards in 2007 and 2009, and is the first new drug from Taiwan that has been approved by TFDA and subsequently FDA to enter the markets.
 

December

The biotech new drug OBI-822 of ObiPharma(4147-TW), which has generated much publicity lately, will complete clinical trial unblinding by the end of February, 2016. If the test result proves positive on the efficacy of OBI-822, ObiPharma will apply for the new drug approval (NDA), an important step to further its cause of making the first active immuno-therapeutic drug against breast cancer in the world.