CytoArm was founded in 2020 and is committed to developing next-generation cancer-specific T cell
medical products. With the original Armed T cell technology platform, a series of Armed-T cell medical
products have been developed, which can effectively treat a variety of blood cancers, solid tumors,
and malignant metastatic tumors. CytoArm owns extensive and exclusive IP layouts on the Armed T cell
technology. Pre-A round fundraising is underway, and we are seeking global strategic partners to
accelerate the entry of Armed T cell products into clinical trials.
Introduction
Introducing A.Catalyst Network
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted an urgent need to invest in healthcare reforms, both to support and strengthen health systems so that they can withstand future pressures, and to ensure that all communities have equitable and affordable access to healthcare.
Inspired by our Values and what science can do, we are focused on accelerating the delivery of life-changing treatments and solutions that create enduring value for patients and society.
A.Catalyst Network embodies AstraZeneca’s commitment to harnessing the power of science to make health happen for as many people, in as many countries, in as many ways, as possible. By understanding the unique barriers to health in different parts of the world, our vision is to improve outcomes and healthcare ecosystems across all International markets. We believe patient experiences and outcomes are our shared responsibility, and that
innovation doesn’t happen in isolation.
A.Catalyst Network brings together diverse stakeholders to forge non-traditional partnerships across geographical boundaries, facilitating collaborative action and opening up new opportunities to harness the power of science for patient-enabled innovation.
A.Catalyst Network is an interconnected and dynamic global network of more than 20 AstraZeneca health innovation hubs, made up of physical locations and virtual partnerships. Through collaborative innovation, we aspire to address current healthcare challenges, increase affordable and equitable access to healthcare and scale and showcase patient-enabled innovation through partnerships within the health ecosystem. Our ultimate aim is to strengthen and future-proof health systems across the whole patient journey, ensuring everyone has equitable and affordable access to the life-changing healthcare solutions they need, regardless of where they live.
A.Catalyst TW hub Ambition
AstraZeneca Taiwan Health Innovation hub forms part of the AstraZeneca
A.Catalyst Network, an interconnected global network of more than 20 AstraZeneca health innovation hubs, made up of
physical locations and virtual partnerships. Taiwan hub was established in 2019 and started to explore
potential partners to establish collaborations aiming to advance innovative science. During the past few
years, Taiwan hub proactively facilitate the scientific exchange and explore potential collaboration
opportunities between Global R&D and top Taiwan researchers in Academia Sinica; as a result, there are
already 2 science-technology (Cyro-EM, Proteogenomics) collaboration with Global R&D. Besides, we
aggressively go extra miles to find partners (National Biotechnology Research Park, NBRP; Taipei Medical
University BioMed Accelerator; Amazon Web Services AWS) for 2019 and 2020 accelerator programs two years
in a row, and over 16 startups were mentored by global BD, R&Dto refine business model and develop
strategy. To further enhance digital health solutions, we successfully partner with Industrial Technology
Research Institute (ITRI),healthcare industries and medical centers to host the Taiwan Health Innovation
Summit and Healthy Lung Smart Innovation center. Our vision is to become Taiwan’s best Healthcare
Innovation Partner in patient solutions of drug, device, diagnosis, and digital health.
Focus area
We are open up for discussion and solutions that can help us better understanding the diseases and provide
high-quality care to patients with cancers, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular, renal and metabolism
diseases. And we are now proactively scouting below solutions:
Oncology
- IPN detection in chest X-rays and CT scans using AI for lung cancer
- HER2 low testing using digital pathology and/or AI for breast cancer
- Genetic counselling platform to identify high-risk patients
CVRM
- Increase CKD screening, diagnosis and early interventions in primary care
- Increase HFpEF diagnosis
- Establish a referral network to support patients with FXai-related bleeding
- Increase our patient base and counter Loss of Exclusivity
R&I
- Improve diagnostic (asthma and COPD) in primary care
- Identify and prevent exacerbations (asthma and COPD)
- Support bio-penetration (SLE & severe asthma)
AI: artificial intelligence,
CKD: chronic kidney disease,
COPD: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
CT: computer tomography,
HFpEF: heart failure with preserved ejection fraction,
IPN: incidental pulmonary nodule,
SLE: systemic lupus erythematosus
Global Network Map
Partners
A.Catalyst Taiwan hub is a community open to partners who are interested in working together to solve healthcare challenges and create innovation solutions in Taiwan. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about our ongoing projects or if you are interested in collaborating with us.
Innovative companies
2019 NBRP Biomed Startup Challenge Finalists
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CytoArm co., ltd.
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Cancerfree
Cancerfree Biotech Ltd. is based on innovative precision medicine and focuses on in vitro amplification of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and the related analysis. Our proprietary platform E.V.A. (Ex Vivo Avatar) can fast expand patient-derived cancer cells from blood and provide patients a precision drug screening report (call EVA Selcect)for developing strategies against cancers at all stages. -
AESOP Technology
Founded in 2019, Aesop Technology aims to optimize the process of clinical decision support with more flexible AI-powered technology to enhance patient safety and the quality of medical coding. -
Academia Sinica - Amnion Biosciences
Develop and manufacture personalized anticancer nanoparticle vaccines using a proprietary polymeric nanoshell technology and peptide modification strategy. The platform enables facile preparation of custom vaccine formulations that can safely induce prominent anticancer T cell responses. -
Guzip Biomarkers Corporation
Guzip Biomarkers Corporation (Guzip) - a Taiwan medical startup established in 2018. Guzip is a research-driven company looking forward to providing novel DNA methylation epigenetic biomarkers for applications and commercialization in the clinic. We establish a complete upstream and downstream supply chain system to accelerate product development through the core capabilities of product specification design, commissioned manufacturing, quality control strategy establishment, and clinical trial design based on the basic research results of academic and research units. Our vision is to be a leading provider dedicated to the female healthcare arena, providing accurate, affordable, and safe medical solutions to women. Furthermore, our mission is to pursue the quality of our product and to constantly innovate. Forward thinking and innovation are parts of the company's mission statement. -
ATP BioPharm
ATP BioPharm is an energized start-up biotech company that will soon spin off from Taipei Medical University with a focus on drug development for unmet medical needs. Our company is positioned to deliver a best-in-class small molecule from preclinical to clinical stage. MPT0G211,
we are developing compound, a first-in-class and oral selective small-molecule HDAC6 inhibitor to against Multiple Myeloma. The majority of the IND enabling studies for MPT0G211 has been completed and we will submit IND application to the US FDA in Q4 2020. Now, ATP BioPharm is seeking seed funding, co-development or licensing opportunities to accelerate the development process and proceed to clinical trials. -
Anbogen Therapeutics, Inc
National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) wishes to form, or spin off, a biotech company (ABT, the NHRI-New Co) focusing on discovery and development of new drugs for treating patients with genetically defined malignancies for whom no standard treatment option exists. Novel chemical entities at clinical stages will be licensed to ABT. Meanwhile, ABT will build a competitive portfolio focusing on driving oncogenes and drug resistance mechanism. ABT is positioned as a precision oncology company specializing in structure-based drug design (SBDD), as well as pre-clinical and clinical development expertise for precision medicines. We strive to be enlisted for public offering by 2024 with two drug candidates under phase 2 trial and one candidate entering phase 1 trial. -
Cytena Bioprocess Solutions Ltd., Co.
Cytena Bioprocess Solutions is a spin-out from a German biotech company and was founded in 2018. We believe the automation and micro technology will bring microbioreactors to a whole new level.
As the current cell line development (CLD) process is extremely time and cost-consuming, the pharmaceutical companies have to spend at least 6 months to find the right cell lines for series production of biosimilar drugs. It’s definitely one of the reasons slowing down the life-saving drugs to the patients. Being a new technology to combine the novel tech of microfluidic and microtechnology, c.bird mimic the cell culture environment of the lager bioreactors (mL - range) into 96 well-plates (~100 µl) and therefore enables cell lines screening and monitoring more cell lines much earlier from the beginning.
Our patented microbioreactor technology – c.bird, can offer a solution, to empower pharmaceutical companies to serve patients in a faster and better way!
2020 Beyond Biomed Accelerator Finalists
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Neurobit Technologies
Neurobit was founded by Travis Yang, Jim Huang, Ching-Fu Wang, and Roger Chen while they were students at National Taiwan University. With the aim of providing revolutionary technology to the medical community, Neurobit have developed a solution for software and hardware integration which leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide comprehensive decision support for physicians in diagnosing patients with headache, dizziness, vertigo, and other potential serious brain diseases. Neurobit’s mission is to solve unmet neuro-clinical needs and offer a triple-win solution to professionals, patients, and insurance companies. -
Derm AI
DermAI focus on AI-augmented Telemedicine, we provide a whole circle service including self-screening, telemedicine, and personal health digital management. -
LumiSTAR Biotechnology, Inc.
LumiSTAR focuses on development of screening platforms. Our platforms & technologies are applying on:
- iPSC drug screening platform with AI analysis
- Personalized in vitro drug testing for cancer and rare diseases/li>
- Cell therapy for fibrosis Drugs discovery for anti-fibrosis and severe COVID-19
- Cell therapy for fibrosis Drugs discovery for anti-fibrosis and severe COVID-19
- Anti-virus drugs screening and vaccines validation for COVID-19
- Clinical diagnosis- One step COVID-19 neutralizing antibody detection kit
LumiSTAR is a bio-imaging expert for studying cellular dynamics, drug discovery and personalized medicine. Customized design and service are available.
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Trust Bio-sonics, Inc
We are a pharmaceutic company in microsphere technologies for contrast-enhanced ultrasound and drug delivery. We target on the areas of cardiovascular diseases and cancers aiming to provide early diagnosis and treatment solutions for patients. -
JelloX Biotech. Inc.
JelloX Biotehc Inc. focuses on development of patented 3D tissue imaging technologies as a next generation pathology platform to fulfill precision cancer diagnosis. Current possibility of success for oncology drug development is low (~3%) mainly due to intra-tumor heterogeneity and complexity of tumor microenvironment, hence pathology-guided patient screening helps enhancing diagnostic sensitivity for an efficient treatment plan. JelloX Biotech Inc. is delivering the first 3D pathology data sets to enable right treatment decision to be made for patients.
JelloX 3D imaging technology diagnosing biopsies with an extra dimension provides a cost-effective method to acquire hundreds times more pathological data and comprehensive biomarker expression profile of the biopsy with preserving tissue structural integrity to cellular level. Taking the advantages of comprehensive 3D information and feasibility of virtual slicing, this technology is capable of precisely determining volume-based biomarker expression level in comparison with conventional 2D pathology. Along with our AI Algorithm and 3D pathology database, unique feature characterization and subgroup classification has benefited retrospective case studies. Our AI-enabled auxiliary diagnostic system can precisely eliminate inadequate patient in clinical trials to significantly raise successful rate of drug development for global pharma and create new medical imaging web service business. -
My MDS HEALTH
My MDS Health is a dental practice management platform company providing AI-based radiograph interpretation and treatment planning services to help dentists and health insurance organizations to improve their patient treatment outcomes, reduce clinical liability and optimize health insurance risk management.
Our journey began at NTU, based on integrated research applying clinical dentistry and public health to industry applications. We are changing the role of oral health care and expanding the uses of dental radiographs to make dentists and payors manage the health of their patients and members more effectively.
My MDS Health wishes to become the 2nd Pair of Eyes for dentists and to be used as an administrative tool for insurance administrators to review dental images to improve patient service quality and capture possible overlooked clinical signs for possible health issues. -
AcroCyte Therapeutics
AcroCyte developed R3CE (Rapid Reproducible Rare Cell 3D Expansion), a rapid 3D culture system for single cell proliferation. It is the only clinical proven platform capable of generating single-cell-derived organoids within one to four weeks. R3CE outperforms currently available 3D culture technologies in terms of yield, efficiency, consistency, and size distribution. In addition, it demonstrates a similar procedure and cost structure to 2D culture protocols.
R3CE is ready for drug testing for all clinical samples, as well as cell therapy and downstream molecular analysis (RT-PCR, NGS, flow cytometry, immunofluorescent staining, etc.) AcroCyte will also continue to advance in conducting clinical treatment and in practicing cancer precision medicine and regenerative medicine in translational study. We welcome collaboration opportunities in forming partnerships with international companies to engage markets in cell therapy, stem cell proliferation, drug screening, preclinical drug testing, in vitro cell culture, cell bank, and precision medicine. -
Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Research (IBPR), National Health Research Institutes (NHRI)
At NHRI Taiwan, IBPR is a fully integrated research unit combining multi-technology platforms in drug discovery and development. These multi-disciplinary technologies cover major aspects of the drug discovery to produce innovative new chemical entities for respective disease treatments.
Ligand-targeted drug conjugates offer enormous potentials to enhance the precision and efficacy of anticancer therapies. Current drug conjugates are designed to target disease-associated antigens or receptors for delivery of toxic agents to tumor sites. One successful strategy is to covalently link toxic agents to antibodies that selectively recognize tumor antigens, i.e., antibody-drug conjugate (ADC). The inevitable decrease in the respective homing signals during the treatment course lowers the efficacy of ligand-targeted drug conjugates. Moreover, lower density of the targeted antigen of tumor cells also presents a bottleneck in the delivery efficiency. Recent studies have demonstrated that down-regulation and modulation of turnover kinetics of target biomarkers can significantly reduce ADCs’ efficacy.
Herein, our “first-in-class” product presents a pharmacokinetically optimizable, cost-effective, single-component, and chemically defined small molecule drug conjugates (SMDC) to drive in situ enrichment of the apoptotic homing signal during treatment. It demonstrates potent efficacy (complete remission) against several tumor models, including pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer and triple negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Global anchor partners
Accelerator/ Bio-park
Digital/AI
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TriNetX
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ASUS Intelligent Cloud Services (AICS)
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AESOP Technology
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Manifold Health Tech Inc.
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D8AI Inc.
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Health2Sync Inc.
VC
Event highlights
2019 NBRP Biomed Startup Challenge
The first international biomedical accelerator in Taiwan that integrated the industries, universities, research institutions and medical fields was the brainchild between the National Biotechnology Research Park (NBRP) and the iDREAM initiative of AstraZeneca (AZ), a global pharmaceutical company. Tapping into the R&D, clinical and start-up resources derived from the Academia Sinica, Taipei Medical University and National Cheng Kung University, the training sessions were delivered by eminent experts and practitioners at home and abroad. Startups focusing on the fields of oncology, cardiovascular/ renal/metabolic diseases, respiratory diseases, and digital health were invited to pitch their entrepreneurial endeavors. The program selected teams with the best potential to represent Taiwan in a global competition. The selected teams were given professional training courses, one-on-one mentoring on commercialization and counseling from international expert over the next three months. The event was testament to how Taiwan's startups are leveraging technology to make a change in the world.
2020 Beyond Biomed Accelerator
2020 Beyond BioMed Accelerator is held by AstraZeneca in collaboration with BioHub Taiwan@NBRP, Amazon
Web Services (AWS). The program will promote the acceleration of the biomedical industry, innovation in
medical technology and services.
Startup teams participating in the program would have the privilege to receive mentoring and support
from internationally renowned institutions in the biomedical industry. Winner teams would be eligible
for three months of intensive acceleration program, one-on-one academic and commercial mentoring.
Throughout the program, the teams would be able to connect with prominent scientists and entrepreneurs
and become part of a global network. We are looking for startups in the two major professional fields as
follows: Digital Health and BioMedicine.
2021 Asia x A.Catalyst Network-Beyond Imagination
In 2021, AstraZeneca Taiwan continued to support its startup partners to explore overseas opportunities afforded by the transnational ecosystem resources of A.Catalyst Network and an platform that linked up six innovation hubs across Asia.
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New vision for healthcare from AZ's global executives:
SVP of Business Development at AstraZeneca and International Director of A. Catalyst Network shared their visions for future healthcare innovation. -
A.Catalyst Network ecosystem showcase:
Demonstrating how the six A.Catalyst Network innovation hubs (Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, and Singapore) and their partners in Asia are empowering startups to grow. -
Local collaboration & global partnership:
Promising startups in 6 counties shared their experience on building a partnership with AZ, from wearable medical devices to pathology AI and chronic disease management digital platform. -
Creating win-wins—case sharing roundtable discussion:
Creating win-wins—case sharing roundtable discussion: Qure.ai, the world's leading medical image AI provider, shared how the partnership with AZ enables it to expand overseas to countries in Asia and Latin America. -
Online showroom showcasing the 6 innovation hubs in Asia:
The online showroom displayed the ecosystem resources and startup teams from the 6 A.Catalyst Network innovation hubs in Asia.
2021 Future Healthcare Laboratory x TIBIC
Future Medical Laboratory
The opening ceremony of the ′′ Future Healthcare Laboratory x TIBIC ′′ Future Medical Laboratory ′′ Future Medical Laboratory ′′ (Future Healthcare Laboratory x TIBIC) was held by the Institute of Healthcare Laboratory x TIBIC finally held on 25-September-2021.
【Initiatives】
The Ministry of Economy led a delegation to AstraZeneca Sweden BioVentrue Hub and signed a letter of intent to cooperate with AstraZeneca, hoping to strengthen cooperation between the two sides in order to promote the development of Taiwan's pharmaceutical industry.
【Future Medical Laboratory Official Establishment
In 2021, Astra Zeneca and the Institute of Industry and Medical Institute of Industry would be the first to take the ′′ Healthy Lung Innovation Center ′′ as a pilot case, centered on patients, with disease Journey is designed for field processes and integrated business innovation model, integrated innovative patient solutions, promoted clinical landing to gain best practice experience, strengthened international academic exchange and business cooperation, linked worldwide and planned to expand into various disease fields. There are currently seven partners, with nine innovative solutions for patients.
【AZ Future Medical Laboratory Opening Ceremony · Sailing New Future】
had successfully ended. After this event, we hope to realize more innovations that full of patient-centric value between AZ and partners, and also open up for future innovative cooperation and more new opportunities between AZ and the industry, government, university, research institution and healthcare.
News
Applications
We are open up for discussion and solutions that can help us better understanding the diseases and provide
high-quality care to patients with therapeutic area of oncology, rare diseases, and bioPharmaceuticals,
including cardiovascular, renal & metabolism, and respiratory & immunology. And we are now proactively
scouting below solutions:
Oncology
- IPN detection in chest X-rays and CT scans using AI for lung cancer
- HER2 low testing using digital pathology and/or AI for breast cancer
- Genetic counselling platform to identify high-risk patients
CVRM
- Increase CKD screening, diagnosis and early interventions in primary care
- Increase HFpEF diagnosis
- Establish a referral network to support patients with FXai-related bleeding
- Increase our patient base and counter Loss of Exclusivity
R&I
- Improve diagnostic (asthma and COPD) in primary care
- Identify and prevent exacerbations (asthma and COPD)
- Support bio-penetration (SLE & severe asthma)
AI: artificial intelligence,
CKD: chronic kidney disease,
COPD: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
CT: computer tomography,
HFpEF: heart failure with preserved ejection fraction,
IPN: incidental pulmonary nodule,
SLE: systemic lupus erythematosus