SUZHOU, China, Dec. 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Convergen, a biotech company pioneering targeted protein degradation (TPD) therapies for diseases driven by pathological protein aggregates, today announced the closing of a $10 million Seed financing round. The round was invested by Qiming Venture Partners, a leading global venture capital firm focused on life sciences and healthcare innovation.

Funds from the financing will accelerate the development of Convergen’s proprietary TrimTAC platform—next-generation bifunctional degraders leveraging the E3 ubiquitin ligase TRIM21—and advance its early pipeline of therapies for neurodegenerative disorders and  diseases with massive unmet medical needs. 

TrimTAC: Addressing a Critical Gap in Targeted Protein Degradation 

Despite their transformative potential, traditional bifunctional degraders face two major hurdles: overreliance on a limited set of E3 ligases and, crucially, inability to selectively eliminate pathogenic multimeric protein aggregates—the root cause of many neurodegenerative diseases.

World-Class Scientific Foundation

Dr. Ting Han (Scientific Co-Founder of Convergen and Associate Investigator of NIBS, Beijing) is a globally recognized protein degradation expert whose pivotal work in the field includes elucidation of the mechanism of action of RBM39 degraders (Science 2017) and the recent discovery of TRIM21-based molecular glue degraders (Cell 2024, ACS Chemical Biology 2025).

Dr. Jinquan Sun, co-Founder of Convergen, said: “The seed financing—led by Qiming Venture Partners—validates TrimTAC’s potential to redefine treatment for diseases caused by pathogenic multimeric proteins. Together with Qiming, we will expand our expertise in TPD and CNS drug development, accelerate our pipeline toward clinical proof-of-concept, and deliver on our mission to help patients with limited treatment options.” 

Dr. Kan Chen，Partner and Co-lead of Healthcare at Qiming Venture Partners, said: “Convergen’s TrimTAC platform addresses a critical gap in TPD—selective degradation of multimeric aggregates—that has held back progress in neurodegenerative diseases. The company’s world-class scientific foundation combined with its veteran leadership team, positions it to become a leader in advancing the next-generation protein degradation. We are proud to partner with Convergen and support its journey to bring transformative therapies to patients.” 

About Convergen 

Convergen is a biotech company pioneering TrimTAC—next-generation bifunctional degraders that leverage TRIM21 to selectively clear pathological multimeric proteins. Founded to address unmet medical needs in neurodegenerative disease and beyond, the company combines cutting-edge academic research with industry-proven drug development expertise to advance therapies for significantly unmet medical needs. 

About Qiming Venture Partners

Qiming Venture Partners was founded in 2006. Currently, Qiming Venture Partners manages eleven US Dollar funds and seven RMB funds with $9.5 billion in capital raised. It invests in outstanding companies in the Technology and Healthcare industries at the early and growth stages. To date, it has backed over 580 fast-growing and innovative companies. Over 210 of portfolio companies have achieved exits through IPOs at the NYSE, NASDAQ, HKEX, Shanghai Stock Exchange, or Shenzhen Stock Exchange, or through M&A or other means. There are also over 80 portfolio companies that have achieved unicorn or super unicorn status. For more, please visit www.qimingvc.com

– New findings demonstrate a 72% HI-E response rate at Week 16 with meaningful hemoglobin improvement –
– Strong activity observed across ESA-refractory and ESA-intolerant patients, and across mutation and morphology subtypes –
– Favorable safety profile with no treatment-related serious adverse events –

LEHI, Utah, Dec. 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Halia Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, today presented new clinical data from its Phase 2a study of ofirnoflast (HT-6184) at the 67th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting. The data show that ofirnoflast, a first-in-class oral allosteric NEK7 inhibitor, induces clinically meaningful and sustained hematologic responses in patients with lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and symptomatic anemia.

In the Stage 1 efficacy population (N=18), ofirnoflast achieved a 72% hematologic improvement-erythroid (HI-E) response rate following ≥16 weeks of therapy. Consistent improvements were observed across WHO morphologic subtypes and somatic mutation categories, supporting a broad and biology-driven mechanism of action.

Key Stage 1 Findings:

• 72% of patients (13/18) achieved HI-E at Week 16, with responders showing a median hemoglobin increase of 3.5 g/dL.
• Strong activity in difficult-to-treat patients, including 91% HI-E in ESA-refractory and 75% HI-E in ESA-intolerant subjects.
• Consistent responses across disease biology, with HI-E observed across transfusion burden categories, WHO morphologic subtypes, and major mutation groups (SF3B1, TET2, DNMT3A, ASXL1, TP53).
• Favorable safety profile, with no treatment-related SAEs, no Grade ≥3 related AEs, and no evidence of treatment-emergent myelosuppression.

These findings reinforce NEK7 inhibition as a promising strategy to address the underlying inflammatory dysregulation central to ineffective hematopoiesis in MDS.

“These data highlight the potential of ofirnoflast to meaningfully improve outcomes for patients with lower-risk MDS,” said David Bearss, Ph.D., CEO of Halia Therapeutics. “Achieving a 72% HI-E response rate, including strong performance in refractory and intolerant patients alongside a clean safety profile, underscores the therapeutic promise of NEK7 inhibition. We look forward to building on these results as we advance the program toward later-stage development.”

Next Steps

Following the FDA Orphan Drug Designation granted in October 2025, Halia is currently communicating next steps with the FDA. Halia is finalizing the dataset and preparing to initiate a global Phase 3 pivotal trial in early 2026.

American Society of Hematology (ASH) Poster Details:

Title: “The Novel Allosteric NEK7 Inhibitor Ofirnoflast (HT-6184) Demonstrates Robust and Sustained Hematologic Response in Subjects with IPSS-R Very Low, Low or Intermediate Risk Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) and Symptomatic Anemia”

Time: Monday, December 8, 2025; 6:00 P.M. – 8:00 P.M. EST

About Halia’s Phase 2 Trial of Ofirnoflast in Lower-Risk MDS

HT-6184-MDS-001 is a Simon’s two-stage, multicenter study evaluating hematologic improvement after 16 weeks of treatment, with an extension phase for responders and molecularly improving non-responders. Key study objectives include evaluating efficacy through hematological improvement, clonal suppression, and VAF reduction, assessing safety and patient tolerance, monitoring changes in inflammasome-related biomarkers, and measuring quality of life using patient-reported outcome tools.

About Halia Therapeutics

Halia Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing first-in-class inflammasome inhibitors. We target the root causes of inflammation-driven diseases to create transformative therapies. For more information, visit www.haliatx.com.

Media Contact

Taylor Avei 
Director of Business Development
Halia Therapeutics
+1 (385) 355-4315
info@haliatx.com

Investor Contact

Leigh Salvo 
New Street Investor Relations
leigh@newstreetir.com

SHENZHEN, China, Dec. 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — PCBAIR announced the launch of its advanced 8-layer Glass Core PCB manufacturing capabilities, combining proprietary Through Glass Via (TGV) technology with multi-layer redistribution layers (RDL). The new glass substrates achieve superior signal integrity and thermal stability, addressing the critical interconnect density limitations faced by traditional organic substrates in the era of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC).

Designed for AI accelerators, high-speed data center servers, and optical transceivers, PCBAIR’s 8-layer Glass Core PCBs support finer line widths and spacing, with pilot production and customer sampling commencing immediately.

PCBAIR developed this high-density interconnect solution through specific innovations in glass processing, metallization, and stacking. Each technical improvement contributes to the reduction of signal loss and the enhancement of mechanical reliability:

1. Precision TGV Technology – Achieving Through Glass Via (TGV) diameters of less than 20 μm and a pitch of under 100 μm. This significantly increases I/O density compared to standard organic substrates, allowing for more efficient vertical signal transmission between chiplets.
2. Optimized 8-Layer Stack-up – Utilizing a symmetric build-up structure (typically 3-2-3 or 4-Core-4) to manage internal stress. This approach ensures exceptional flatness and reduces warpage issues often seen in large-body organic packages during reflow, which is critical for the assembly of large AI chipsets.
3. Superior Electrical Performance – The glass core material offers a lower dielectric loss (Df < 0.002) compared to traditional epoxy-based materials. This reduction in insertion loss improves signal transmission efficiency by approximately 15%–20% for high-frequency applications, essential for next-generation 112G and 224G SerDes links.
4. Thermal Management – The thermal expansion coefficient (CTE) of the glass core is closely matched to silicon dies. This minimizes stress on solder joints during thermal cycling, enhancing the long-term reliability of the packaged device.

Altogether, these improvements enable chip designers to bypass current packaging bottlenecks, allowing for higher performance scaling without the exponential cost increase associated with traditional silicon interposers.

“We are proud to introduce our 8-layer Glass Core PCB capabilities, marking a practical step forward in advanced packaging,” said Victor Zhang, a technology expert and the chief technology officer of PCBAIR. Zhang, whose technical insights have been recognized by major media outlets such as Forbes, added, “By moving from organic to glass cores, we are providing a stable foundation for the industry’s most demanding compute workloads, maintaining the precision and reliability our partners expect.”

PCBAIR’s Glass Core PCBs are also fully compatible with existing substrate assembly lines, ensuring a smoother transition for customers looking to adopt glass-based technology. The company offers a turnkey solution, handling the delicate manufacturing and assembly processes required for glass substrates to mitigate supply chain risks for its global clients.

About PCBAIR

Established in 2014, PCBAIR is a leading PCB manufacturer and assembly service provider dedicated to high-reliability electronics. With over a decade of expertise, the company provides a seamless one-stop solution ranging from rapid prototyping to high-volume manufacturing. PCBAIR’s services include PCB fabrication, component sourcing, and turnkey assembly. The company is certified to IATF 16949, ISO 13485, and ISO 9001, and adheres to IPC-A-610 and J-STD-001 standards. The company also ensures full environmental and safety compliance via UL, RoHS, and REACH certifications. For more information, visit www.pcbair.com.

For media inquiries, please contact: 
Cyndi
Marketing Manager
Email: Inquiry@pcbair.com
Website: https://www.pcbair.com

ASHBURN, Va., Dec. 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC), a leading enterprise technology and innovation partner, today announced the appointment of Russell Jukes as Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO). In this expanded role, Russell becomes the first to lead DXC’s end-to-end digital and AI agenda, accelerating the company’s AI-powered transformation and ensuring its global technology environment is optimized to support customers’ strategic operations and our employees AI fluency. 

DXC Appoints Russell Jukes as Chief Digital Information Officer to Strengthen Unified Digital Strategy

Since joining DXC in 2017, Russell has played a pivotal role in shaping DXC’s digital strategy and global technology capabilities. He has overseen DXC’s enterprise technology environment and has been central to advancing modernization across platforms, applications, and employee experience. Most recently, he played a key role in supporting the development of Xponential, DXC’s proven AI framework that simplifies the complexity that often stalls large-scale AI adoption. 

As CDIO, Russell will bring together digital, information, and AI transformation agendas across the groups delivering services, solutions, and software to our customers. This approach reflects a broader industry shift in which digital leaders increasingly oversee AI investment and innovation, while technology leaders continue to run mission-critical environments. 

“Russell has been instrumental in leading DXC’s digital and technology transformation. He has modernized our core systems, empowered our teams with better tools, and strengthened our technology foundation to meet the needs of our customers. As DXC continues to expand our AI capabilities, his leadership will be essential in driving meaningful and measurable impact for our customers and for DXC.” Raul Fernandez, CEO, DXC 

The announcement further aligns DXC’s digital, data, and technology capabilities to accelerate enterprise-scale AI. In his expanded role, Russell will also advance DXC’s Human+ ways of working, introducing new models that enhance how teams collaborate, learn, and build next-generation solutions. 

“I am honored to take on this expanded role at a time when digital, information, and AI must operate as one connected strategy. This structure gives us the clarity and alignment needed to innovate faster, run smarter, and help our customers transform with confidence. I look forward to building on the momentum of Xponential and supporting the next wave of AI-driven capabilities across DXC.” Russell Jukes, Chief Digital Information Officer, DXC 

Before joining DXC, Russell held senior roles across global technology organizations at HP and HPE, where he led modernization, enterprise engineering, and digital operations programs. He also sponsors DXC talent and innovation initiatives focused on cloud transformation and responsible AI adoption. 

About DXC Technology
DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) is a leading enterprise technology and innovation partner delivering software, services, and solutions to global enterprises and public sector organizations — helping them harness AI to drive outcomes at a time of exponential change with speed. With deep expertise in Managed Infrastructure Services, Application Modernization, and Industry-Specific Software Solutions, DXC modernizes, secures, and operates some of the world’s most complex technology estates. Learn more on dxc.com 

For the first time, the world’s most strategic assets—AI supercomputing centers, strategic real estate and critical energy assets—are crossing the threshold into programmable digital markets.

NEW YORK, Dec. 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — The global economy is entering a new era where competitive advantage is defined not by access to capital alone, but by control of computational power, sovereign data, and the infrastructure that fuels modern civilization. Today, Abstract and Open World announce a landmark partnership to build the world’s first national-scale real-world asset (RWA) tokenization engine, capable of bringing the planet’s most valuable physical assets onto a next-generation, quantum-resistant zero-knowledge (ZK) blockchain anchored to Ethereum.

For decades, the planet’s most valuable assets have existed beyond the reach of modern digital markets. Hyperscale AI megacenters humming with the densest clusters of NVIDIA’s most advanced GPUs. Oil fields that fuel nations strategic national infrastructure. Energy grids, industrial complexes, sovereign reserves—all immense in value, yet trapped inside analog capital structures accessible only to a narrow band of global institutions.

Now, for the first time, these assets are stepping into the digital world and accessible to mainstream global investors.

AI megacenters and national energy reserves can be represented as tokenized Blue Chip real-world assets—unlocking liquidity, enabling compliant fractional ownership, and giving governments, regulated central organizations, and enterprises unprecedented control over how capital forms, moves, and interacts with their most strategic physical infrastructure and assets.

The Infrastructure: An Enterprise-Grade, Quantum-Resistant ZK Blockchain

At the center of this transformation will be Abstract’s next-generation, quantum-resistant ZK blockchain, backed by leading technology investors, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, demonstrating how advanced blockchain technologies will enable new forms of tokenization by sovereign nations and enterprises operating at global scale.

Unlike legacy blockchains that expose data, or permissioned chains controlled by small validator groups, Abstract aims to deliver the scale, privacy, and decentralization guarantees required for trillion-dollar capital systems:

• Over 10,000 TPS throughput
• Low cost per transaction ($0.001)
• Zero-knowledge cryptography for user and data privacy
• Embedded policy controls, and absolute sovereign and enterprise-grade command.

The very pillars required for secure, compliant, nation-grade digital asset infrastructure.

“Our partnership with Abstract aims to unlock a new category of Blue Chip RWAs,” said Matt Shaw, Co-founder and CEO of Open World. Open World has already tokenized over $65 billion in premium crypto assets to date, providing institutional-scale infrastructure for real-world asset deployment. “Our RWA tokenization engine on Abstract will be a quantum-resistant platform for national economies—built for countries and enterprises that manage critical infrastructure, sovereign monetary systems, and multi-trillion-dollar asset portfolios.“

Internet Capital Markets: Tokenizing the World’s Most Premium RWAs

Through this alliance, AI supercomputing facilities—cathedrals of silicon and energy—can be expressed as programmable Blue Chip digital assets. Oil fields and energy infrastructure, long considered too strategic or politically sensitive to open to global capital markets, can now be represented as value appreciating premium digital instruments within fully compliant, sovereign or corporate frameworks.

The implications are profound. Liquidity can flow into assets previously inaccessible. Nations and global enterprises can modernize capital formation without relinquishing control. Global investors can access assets that define the 21st century—not as speculative tokens, but as regulated, institutional-grade digital instruments.

“Abstract unlocks what we call Internet Capital Markets, a world where financial systems live natively on the internet and move at the speed of culture,” said Abstract Co-Founder and CEO Michael Lee. “It complements traditional markets with a permissionless, borderless, high-throughput quantum-resistant blockchain that makes capital formation and trading as accessible and instant as posting online.“

Leaders from both organizations emphasized that this partnership is not merely commercial, it marks the moment financial systems begin operating natively on the internet: borderless, programmable, always on. By converting institutional real-world and digital assets into instant, compliant, globally accessible instruments, capital can finally move with the speed of culture and computation.

Why National-Scale Tokenization Requires Abstract and Ethereum, Not Centralized Chains

Sovereign stablecoins and national-grade RWA systems require unprecedented guarantees of decentralization, collusion resistance, and censorship immunity—standards centralized chains structurally cannot meet.

Russ McMeekin, Chairman of mCloud Saudi Arabia the Google Cloud Certified Web3 Platform running in the KSA Sovereign Data Center and leader of the global enterprise RWA initiative, explained, “The tokenization of premium Blue Chip RWAs demands the highest levels of security, compliance, and architectural sovereignty. Abstract on Ethereum is the only stack capable of delivering national-scale, enterprise-grade security tokenization and stablecoin issuance, while giving enterprises complete control within their own data centers. No foreign entity can freeze transactions, impose blacklists, or seize assets.“

Permissioned blockchains rely on a few hundred coordinated validators, an unacceptable risk surface for national infrastructure. Many public chains have repeatedly halted and restarted, demonstrating that their validator sets can coordinate to rewrite state. For sovereign and enterprise assets, this risk is existential.

Ethereum, secured by over one million active validators, stands alone as the most decentralized, economically secure, and censorship-resistant settlement layer in history. Abstract inherits Ethereum’s security and settlement guarantees while adding:

• Sovereign-grade privacy
• National-scale throughput
• Embedded compliance and policy controls
• On-premise deployment within enterprise and government datacenters

This ensures that AI megacenters, energy assets, and national infrastructure can be digitized without sacrificing sovereignty or control.

About Abstract
Abstract is a quantum-resistant zero-knowledge blockchain anchored to Ethereum, built for the next cultural era of the internet—where a new generation demands fun, ownership, and creativity, and where sovereign nations and global enterprises are transitioning from legacy financial systems to privacy-preserving stablecoins. Backed by Founders Fund and created by builders behind Ethereum, Pudgy Penguins, and Kubernetes, Abstract powers high-scale consumer experiences across gaming, digital collectibles, and the creator economy, while enabling compliant stablecoin issuance and premium real-world asset tokenization for enterprises and nation-states. Abstract sits at the intersection of culture and computation, building the digital infrastructure where the next generation will live, create, and transact. Learn more at abs.xyz.

Media Contact
Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis (on behalf of Abstract)
abstract@ssmandl.com