Gilead Turnaround This Year?

Jefferies Michael Yee recently sat down with Gilead Sciences (GILD) management, and the meeting reinforced his bullish thesis on the stock, that a turnaround is “happening this year.”

He writes that Gilead executives, including the chief executive, remain confident that the company would hit a trough this year and then resume growth, which will continue into 2019. Moreover, the second quarter should be better than the first, given one-time issues around its Hepatitis C and HIV businesses that weren’t well understood by the Street.

Yee reiterated a Buy rating and $95 price target on the shares today, writing that Gilead is still his “best large-cap idea” and that its turnaround and recovery offer a different narrative than other large biotechs, where the concern is mostly about generic or biosimilar risks in the coming years.

He also notes that M&A is viewed positively for the company, and if Gilead buys “fairly de-risked assets,” the news should be greeted with enthusiasm. Yee believes that longer term, with revenue and earnings growing again in 2019 to 2021, its multiple should expand.

Gilead is down 0.6% to $71.53 at a recent check; the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB) is falling 0.1%, to $100.45 and the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI) is 0.6% lower to $97.21.

https://bit.ly/2sRrYCH

Illumina Extends Supply Pact With Foundation Med, Links to PerkinElmer

Foundation Medicine and Illumina have amended their supply and service agreement and extended the terms of the agreement through June 6, 2023, according to a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by Foundation Medicine on Thursday.

According to the agreement, Illumina will supply Foundation Medicine and its German subsidiary with sequencers, reagents, other consumables, as well as service contracts to maintain and repair its instruments. Foundation Medicine has committed to purchasing a certain amount of reagents and other consumables every six months. Sequencers and service contract prices will be based on Illumina’s list prices, while reagents and consumables prices are fixed for a set period of time.

Separately, Illumina also said today that it has codeveloped a metagenomic sequencing workflow with PerkinElmer. The workflow combines Illumina’s Nextera DNA Flex library prep kit with PerkinElmer’s automation and will enable DNA to be extracted and sequenced from samples without needing to culture the bacteria.

The workflow is “aimed at significantly improving the discovery of microbiota-related disorders,” Mitu Chaudhary, manager of product management and library preparation solutions at Illumina, said in a statement.

Mark Dupal, global portfolio director or microfluidics and automation, applied genomics at PerkinElmer, added that the automation would “enable greater laboratory efficiency, reduce labor costs, and generate consistent, high-quality data.”

https://bit.ly/2MexSq2

Low-fat diet tied to improved breast cancer survival odds

Breast cancer patients may have a better chance of survival when they follow a low-fat diet heavy in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, a U.S. study suggests.

Researchers studied 19,541 participants in the federally funded Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) who were randomly selected to join a dietary experiment focused on limiting fat intake to 20 percent of calories. Researchers also looked at data for a control group of 29,294 women in the WHI study who didn’t alter their diets.

By the time the researchers had been tracking half the women for at least 8.5 years, 1,764 participants had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

A decade after their diagnosis, 82 percent of the breast cancer patients on the low-fat diet were still alive, compared with 78 percent in the control group.

For women on the low-fat diet who developed breast cancer, this translated into a 22 percent lower risk of death during the study, and these women typically didn’t succeed at reducing fat consumption by the amount suggested in the diet experiment.

“Decades ago, comparison of country-to-country differences in fat intake found countries with higher fat intake like the U.S. and most of Western Europe had higher breast cancer mortality, but subsequent observational studies have had inconsistent results,” said lead study author Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California.

The WHI dietary modification trial is the only full-scale randomized trial addressing this issue,” Chlebowski said by email.

The main goal of the diet experiment was to get women to change their eating habits, not to count calories or lose weight.

Women assigned to change their diets had a series of group and individual counseling sessions with certified nutritionists over the first year of the program, followed by group sessions four times a year for the remainder of the experiment.

After one year, women in the diet group got about 24 percent of their calories from fat compared with 35 percent fat in other participants’ diets. While weight loss wasn’t a goal, women in the diet group weighted about 2.2 kilograms (4.9 pounds) less than other participants.

While the diet experiment was ongoing, 671 women in the diet group and 1,093 who didn’t alter their eating habits developed breast cancer. This difference was too small to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance.

But women on the low-fat diet were less likely to develop certain hard-to-treat tumors.

One limitation of the study is that researchers relied on women to accurately describe their eating habits in questionnaires, the researchers note in JAMA Oncology. Another drawback is that women in the diet group managed only minimal increases in their consumption of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

Because women in the low-fat diet group did lose weight relative to other participants, it’s also possible that weight rather than the fat content of the diet might explain the differences in cancer survival odds, said Dr. Graham Colditz, a researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“For lowering breast cancer risk – and cancer risk overall – the most important part of diet is to keep calories in check,” Colditz said by email. “Weight gain and obesity is an important risk factor for postmenopausal breast cancer – and 12 other cancers.”

Not all fat is created equal, either.

“There is no evidence that total fat intake affects the risk of breast cancer,” Colditz said. “There is growing evidence, however, suggesting that type of fat could be important, with diets rich in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats possibly lowering risk, and those higher in saturated and animal fats possibly increasing risk.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/2LYypwv JAMA Oncology, online May 24, 2018.

https://reut.rs/2sIGOMx

U.S. expands China health alert amid illness reports

The U.S. State Department on Friday issued an expanded health alert for all of China amid reports some U.S. diplomats based in the country had experienced a mysterious malady that resembles a brain injury and has already affected U.S. personnel in Cuba.

A previous statement in May only mentioned the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou as the location for the health alert, though it was sent to U.S. citizens throughout the country.

The State Department had confirmed earlier that one U.S. employee assigned to the consulate in Guangzhou had “suffered a medical incident”, and that it had deployed a team to screen employees and family members there.

On Wednesday the U.S. government said that it had brought a group of people from that consulate back to the United States for further evaluation of their symptoms, and that it was offering screening to anyone at the U.S. embassy in Beijing or other consulates in China who requested it.

The United States also operates consulates in the mainland Chinese cities of Chengdu, Shanghai, Shenyang and Wuhan.

The location of the health alert was changed to “countrywide” from Guangzhou in the updated statement sent by email.

“The State Department received medical confirmation that a U.S. government employee in China suffered a medical incident consistent with what other U.S. government personnel experienced in Havana, Cuba,” the statement said, reiterating comments made last month by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It warned of “unexplained physical symptoms or events, auditory or sensory phenomena”, and said symptoms of the ailment included dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, fatigue, cognitive issues, visual problems, ear complaints and hearing loss, as well as difficulty sleeping.

China has said that it thoroughly investigated the initial case reported by the United States and found no reasons or clues to explain it.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Thursday that as far as she was aware the Chinese government had not had any formal communication with U.S. officials on any new cases.

China’s state-run Global Times tabloid called the situation at the consulate “very strange”.

“Practically all Chinese people do not believe that this country’s official organizations would carry out such sonic attacks against U.S. diplomats. This does not fit with China’s basic concept and principles of diplomacy, and is inconceivable,” the Global Times said in an editorial.

It also said people found it hard to believe that another foreign country could carry out such an attack in China, escape China’s monitoring, and leave no trace.

Last year, 24 U.S. government employees and family members in Cuba displayed the symptoms, which were similar to those related to concussion and mild traumatic brain injury, according to the State Department.

The illnesses among the American diplomats stationed in Havana heightened tension between the old Cold War foes.

Pompeo released a statement on Tuesday saying the department established a task force last month “to direct a multi-agency response to the unexplained health incidents”.

https://reut.rs/2Jx4jyt

Cost plunges for capturing carbon dioxide from the air

Pulling carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air and using it to make synthetic fuel seems like the ultimate solution to climate change: Instead of adding ever more CO₂ to the air from fossil fuels, we can simply recycle the same CO₂ molecules over and over. But such technology is expensive—about $600 per ton of CO₂, by one recent estimate. Now, in a new study, scientists say future chemical plants could drop that cost below $100 per ton—which could make synthetic fuels a reality in places such as California that incentivize low-carbon fuels.

Those numbers are “real progress,” says Chris Field, a climate scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. That’s because the new study bases its numbers on data and costs from a real pilot facility, whereas others have relied on scientists’ best guesses of how CO₂ capture technologies scale up. “These guys actually have something you can measure,” says Stephen Pacala, an ecologist with Princeton University who is chairing a panel on carbon removal technologies for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Until now, the cost of climate change has been all about projections. Climate scientists say countries will need to drop CO₂ emissions to near zero by midcentury and then remove more CO₂than they emit, if the planet is to avoid a catastrophic 2°C warming. Numerous so-called negative emissions technologies exist, including growing perennial plants and trees to make biofuels, and sequestering carbon in soils. One of the most compelling, known as direct air capture (DAC), uses giant banks of fans to blow air through a solution that contains a CO₂-capturing chemical. Once purified, the captured CO₂ can be injected underground or used to make commercial products, such as fuels or plastics. But in 2011, a review panel of the American Physical Society found that DAC would likely cost about $600 per ton of captured CO₂.

That didn’t deter David Keith, a physicist at Harvard University who co-founded a company focused on DAC. In 2015, Carbon Engineering launched its first pilot plant for capturing CO₂ in British Columbia in Canada. After capturing the CO₂ in solution, the plant transfers it into a solid, which when heated releases it in a pure gas stream. The crucial CO₂-capturing chemical is recycled. After 3 years, Keith and his colleagues had collected enough data to calculate the plant’s efficiency—and project the costs of building a commercial scale plant with the same technology. The results: Their technology can capture CO₂ for between $94 and $232 per ton, they report today in Joule.

The company has also built a pilot operation to turn captured CO₂ into a variety of liquid fuels, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. A renewable energy–powered electrolyzer first splits water into hydrogen (H₂) and oxygen. The H₂ is then combined with CO₂ to make liquid hydrocarbons using conventional chemical engineering technology. If the CO₂ is captured at the low end of the cost range, the company says can produce its synthetic fuels for about $1 per liter, says Steve Oldham, Carbon Engineering’s CEO.

That’s more expensive than most fuels today, but not by much. And because the process recycles carbon from the air, it would constitute a low-carbon fuel, something that places such as California are increasingly requiring in their fuel mixes, and which command a premium price. That could drive a market for DAC plants that would likely drive costs down further, Oldham says. Still, Field cautions that the technology isn’t a silver bullet for combatting climate change—there’s no way yet to know whether it can scale up quickly enough to alter CO₂ levels in the atmosphere. “There is a long way to go to see whether it will have any large-scale impact.”

https://bit.ly/2kWU4ZB

New flu viruses found in dogs

Influenza poses a perennial threat in part because of its ability to jump from species to species. Birds and pigs have been known to harbor viruses that cross over to humans, and even dogs and cats have carried nonhuman-infecting varieties of influenza. Now, man’s best friend is closer to joining the list of potential vectors, Science News reports. Researchers in southern China found a surprising variety of flu viruses in dogs, including three new variants of influenza A that evolved after being passed on by pigs, researchers reported this week in mBio. The new finding doesn’t mean you’ll have to put a surgical mask on your beagle any time soon, but it does mean scientists are going to be closely monitoring the evolution of canine influenza.

https://bit.ly/2sISfDT

Carbon dioxide reduces belly fat

The first randomized, controlled trial testing carbon dioxide gas injections (carboxytherapy) to reduce belly fat found the new technique eliminates fat around the stomach. However, the changes were modest and did not result in long-term fat reduction, according to the Northwestern Medicine study.

“Carboxytherapy could potentially be a new and effective means of fat reduction,” said lead author Dr. Murad Alam, vice chair of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician. “It still needs to be optimized, though, so it’s long lasting.”

The paper was published this week in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

The new technique‘s benefits are that it is a “safe, inexpensive gas, and injecting it into fat pockets may be preferred by patients who like natural treatments,” Alam said. “Non-invasive fat reduction has become increasingly sought-after by patients.”

Benefits of a non-invasive approach are diminished downtime, avoidance of scarring and perceived safety.

Current technologies routinely used for non-invasive fat reduction include cryolipolysis, high intensity ultrasound, radiofrequency, chemical adipocytolysis and laser-assisted fat reduction.

Carboxytherapy has been performed primarily outside the U.S., with a few clinical studies suggesting it may provide a lasting improvement in abdominal contours. The way carboxytherapy works is not well understood. It is believed that injection of carbon dioxide causes changes in the microcirculation, and damages fat cells.

No randomized controlled trials for carboxytherapy efficacy and benefit over time have been previously conducted. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of carboxytherapy for fat reduction in a randomized, controlled trial, and to determine if any observed benefits persisted for six months.

The Northwestern study consisted of 16 adults who were not overweight (body mass of 22 to 29) and were randomized to get weekly carbon dioxide gas injection to one side of their abdomens and a sham treatment on the other side once a week for five weeks. A high-resolution ultrasound detected a reduction in superficial fat after five weeks but not at 28 weeks. The patients’ body weight did not change over the course of the study.

That the difference was not maintained at six months suggests the treatment stimulated a temporary metabolic process that reduced the size of fat cells without inducing cell death, Alam said.

“If carboxytherapy can provide prolonged benefits, it offers patients yet another noninvasive option for fat reduction,” Alam said. “But we don’t feel it’s ready for prime time.”

https://bit.ly/2sPtkOd