Sell-siders on board with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Q4 & outlook

Takeaways from Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (BMY -1.5%) Q4 beat this week:

Goldman’s Terence Flynn (Buy/$79): Solid Q4 and initial guidance for the combined company a “good starting point.” Believes EPS guidance for 2021 is “encouraging” but notes that expected EPS in 2022 reflects a “moderated” pace.

Guggenheim’s Seamus Fernandez (Neutral): Solid Q4, believes sales growth will be fine as it integrates Celgene. 2020/2021 guidance a relief to investors concerned with Otezla divestment.

JPMorgan’s Chris Schott (Overweight/$74): Solid Q4 with no major surprises. Key catalysts this year will be data readouts on Opdivo, BMS-986165 and Celgene pipeline.

Atlantic Securities’ Steve Chesney (Overweight/$78): Guidance provided a “comforting” look at near-term top and bottom growth prospects. Multiple pipeline updates could stoke share appreciation.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3539775-sell-siders-on-board-bristol-myers-squibbs-q4-outlook

Tesla aims for restart in Shanghai next week

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is expected to resume production at its Shanghai factory on February 10.

Government officials in Shanghai will assist Tesla in the restart amid the coronavirus outbreak.

“In view of the practical difficulties key manufacturing firms including Tesla have faced in resuming production, we will coordinate to make all efforts to help companies resume production as soon as possible,” stated Shanghai municipal government spokesman Xu Wei.

Tesla warned on January 30 of a Model 3 production delay in China of a week to 1.5 weeks.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3539869-tesla-aims-for-restart-in-shanghai-next-week

China confirms New Coronavirus infection through air via aerosol

China’s official health department confirmed on Saturday (February 8) that the new coronavirus can be transmitted through the air.
At a press conference held in Shanghai, health and epidemic prevention experts confirmed that in addition to direct transmission and contact transmission, the transmission route of New Coronary Pneumonia also includes “aerosol transmission”.
Aerosol is a colloidal dispersion system formed by solid or liquid small particles dispersed and suspended in a gaseous medium. In simple terms, aerosols are small liquid or solid particles that are stably dispersed and suspended in the air and cannot be seen by the naked eye.
The so-called “aerosol transmission” means that the droplets are mixed in the air to form an “aerosol”, which causes infection after inhalation.
Previously, on February 5, the National Health and Medical Commission’s website published the “Diagnosis and Treatment of New Coronavirus Infected Pneumonia (Trial Fifth Edition)”. To be determined “.
After an interval of 3 days, the aerosol transmission route was confirmed by the official Chinese health department.
The difference between aerosol and droplet transmission is the distance of transmission. Droplets and contact infections occur within a short range, while aerosols travel long distances, increasing the risk of contactless infection.
Aerosol infection
As the Chinese Lunar New Year Lantern Festival comes, health authorities warn that the virus is spreading among family members.
The Shanghai Health Department announced on February 8 that only 8 days and a half days, 5 new cases were confirmed, of which 2 were from overseas and 3 were residents of Shanghai. The total number of confirmed cases was 286.
Zeng Qun, deputy director of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, said at a press conference that the community is urged to pay attention to the prevention of cluster epidemics and to increase the awareness of family cluster epidemic prevention.
We must cancel all social gatherings and discourage relatives and friends in key epidemic areas from postponing their plans to Shanghai;
Normally open windows and more ventilation to maintain indoor air circulation;
Do daily household disinfection: wipe key points such as door handles, tables, chairs, and toilet seat cushions with 75% ethanol or chlorine-containing disinfectant;
Personal hygiene: Wash your hands with running water, soap or hand sanitizer before and after meals. Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or elbow flexion when coughing or sneezing;
Avoid air and contact transmission: Family members should avoid contact with body secretions of people with suspicious symptoms, and do not share personal daily necessities; during meals, chopsticks are divided into meals, eat fast, talk less, communicate with each other, avoid handshake and hugs, smile with hands etiquette.
Epidemic prevention experts also recommend that, as a precautionary measure, remember to put on the toilet lid and flush the suspicious patient in your home before flushing the toilet.
After the spread of the Wuhan epidemic led to the Chinese authorities ’decision to block the city on January 23 to prevent epidemics, traffic in Wuhan, Hubei and surrounding provinces was severely affected. Airlines from multiple countries have suspended flights to and from Wuhan.
Wuhan, known as the “nine provinces’ thoroughfare”, is not only a transportation hub in China, but also a major industrial town in China. There are no statistics on the economic impact of the closure of Wuhan.
As Shanghai, the economic center of eastern China, if the epidemic is out of control, the impact on China and the world economy will be immeasurable.
Hong Kong isolation measures
The pneumonia epidemic caused by the new coronavirus spreading from Wuhan has still not shown signs of abating. Epidemic prevention measures in many countries and regions in the world are also tightening.
From Saturday (8th) in Hong Kong, all people entering Hong Kong from mainland China, including Hong Kong residents and foreign visitors, must be quarantined for 14 days: at home, in a hotel room or in a government isolation center.
A total of 26 confirmed cases from Hong Kong to Friday. The strike by medical staff in Hong Kong, which began on February 3, was also suspended on Saturday.
From January 30 to February 4, the Hong Kong government closed 10 entry and exit ports with mainland China. In response to the recent tide of people buying food and household goods in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government stated that the epidemic prevention and control measures will not affect the mainland and Hong Kong’s freight traffic, and there is sufficient food supply.
Outbreak
As of February 7, more than 30,000 people have been diagnosed with infection in China, and the death toll has exceeded 700.
According to the World Health Organization, 270 cases have occurred in more than 20 countries outside mainland China.
In Wuhan, China, an American citizen has died of a new coronavirus. This is believed to be the first foreigner to die from the virus infection. Media reports said that the 60-year-old American woman had other health problems before her death.
In addition, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that a Japanese citizen who died in Wuhan Hospital had obvious symptoms of infection with the new coronavirus.
French health authorities have confirmed that five British tourists, four adults and one child, have been diagnosed with a virus in a ski area on the border between Italy and Switzerland in Haute-Savoie, eastern France. One of them has been to Singapore recently.
Three cases have been confirmed in the UK. Two of them were Chinese citizens, and the third was a British returning from Singapore.
Britain has so far withdrawn two groups of diasporas from China, both of which have been separated for 14 days.
About 150 people in the third batch of British evacuated people will leave China on Sunday (9th) and will be taken to a convention centre in Milton Keynes in central England for 14 days.
The UK Department of Health and Social Security announced that by Friday afternoon (7th) a total of 620 suspected cases had been detected in the UK and only 3 were confirmed.
https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/world-51427216

Gavin Newsom’s single-payer commission is doomed to fail

Last week, Gavin Newsom’s Healthy California for All Commission convened for the first time. The commission has been tasked with figuring out how to install a single-payer healthcare system statewide.
The commission’s 13 voting and five non-voting members represent a who’s-who of big-government academics, union leaders, and public health officials. If they approach their job with any measure of objectivity, they’ll find what other blue-state officials who have examined single-payer have found: there’s no way to make the numbers work.
No state — not even one as large and wealthy as California — can afford to pay for the care of every one of its residents, both legal and illegal. Bringing single-payer to the Golden State would cripple our economy and wallop taxpayers.
Newsom specifically requested that his commissioners design a “unified financing system” for a future government-run health plan. The commission will release its initial findings this July, with final recommendations to the legislature coming in February of next year.

The commission has an impossible task. The price tag for single-payer is simply too high.
Consider California’s last flirtation with a single, government-run healthcare system – Senate Bill 562, which passed the state Senate in 2017. The Democratic-controlled State Assembly never even scheduled a vote on the measure, which lacked any revenue-raising mechanisms despite calling for roughly $400 billion in annual spending — more than double the state budget that year.
As Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said, “This bill wasn’t even half-baked. It wasn’t even a bill. It was an incomplete list of principles.”
California’s overwhelmingly Democratic legislature was hardly the first group of progressives to balk at single-payer’s price tag.
Six years ago, Vermont — Bernie Sanders’s home state — got cold feet. Implementing single-payer in the Green Mountain State would have required a new 9.5-percent state income tax and a new 11.5-percent payroll tax on employers.

Vermont’s then-governor, Peter Shumlin, abandoned the plan after deciding that the “potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small business, working families, and the state’s economy.” He called it “the greatest disappointment of my political life.”
In 2016, voters in Colorado rejected Amendment 69, a ballot measure that would have created a statewide single-payer system, by a 79-21 margin. Even the state’s Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, urged his fellow citizens to reject the initiative. Here, too, cost was the main sticking point. The plan would have imposed a new 10 percent payroll tax on state residents and roughly doubled the state budget.
Not only is single-payer costly — it results in poor-quality care.
Consider Canada’s government-run system, which outlaws private coverage for anything deemed medically necessary, just as Sanders’s brand of Medicare for All would. The median wait for Canadians seeking specialist treatment following referral from a general practitioner exceeded 20 weeks last year. That’s up from just 9.3 weeks in 1993.
Patients in the United Kingdom’s government-run National Health Service have it just as bad. In December, wait times at emergency rooms throughout Britain were the longest on record, with one in five patients waiting more than four hours to be seen. Over 2,000 patients that month waited more than 12 hours for a hospital bed.

 

The waits imposed by government-run health systems often have tragic and irreversible consequences. A new report from a British watchdog group estimates that 22 people a month endure severe or permanent sight loss because of long wait times for eye doctors.
One-quarter of British cancer patients experience avoidable delays in diagnosis, according to Cancer Research UK, a charity. Long waits for tests were responsible for one-fourth of those avoidable delays. It’s no wonder survival rates for cancers of the breast, colon, lung, and prostate are lower in the United Kingdom than in the United States.
Yet Gov. Newsom and his allies remain intent on bringing socialized medicine to the Golden State. If his handpicked commissioners conduct a sober review of the facts, they’ll recommend that the governor stop his single-payer crusade.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and the Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All, (Encounter 2020).

Gavin Newsom’s single-payer commission is doomed to fail

Canada Scientist In Midst Of Chinese Bio-Espionage Probe Found Dead In Africa?

Update (1135ET): It seems that Mr. Plummer made a habit of getting the biological material he was working on “stolen,” as we found a report from 2009 in the Winnepeg Free Press that details the theft of 22 vials of biological material was “confirmed by scientific director Dr. Frank Plummer.”

Plummer, allegedly, alerted authorities to the missing material on the same day a former vaccine researcher was arrested by FBI special agents after U.S. Customs discovered the vials stuffed in a glove in the trunk of his car at the Manitoba-North Dakota border crossing.
Some of the vials included genes from the deadly Ebola virus, but local scientists say the material is not infectious.
But more than a week after the theft came to light, police said no one from the lab has reported the incident.
Plummer has said the researcher signed a form declaring he did not steal anything from the lab and understood he was not allowed to. The national lab does not conduct searches of staff when they exit the lab and does not routinely take inventory of the thousands of vials containing non-infectious biological substances.
However, court documents allege the former researcher stole the vials on his last day of work at the virology lab in January because “he did not want to start his research over from the beginning when he entered into his next fellowship” with the National Institutes of Health at the Biodefense Research Laboratory in Maryland.

All very curious.
*  *  *
As GreatGameIndia.com detailed earlier, in a very strange turn of events, renowned scientist Frank Plummer who received Saudi SARS Coronavirus sample and was working on Coronavirus (HIV) vaccine in the Winnipeg based Canadian lab from where the virus was smuggled by Chinese Biowarfare agents and weaponized as revealed in GreatGameIndia investigation, has died in mysterious conditions.

Frank Plummer was the key to the Chinese Biological Espionage case at Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory.

• Breaking: India launch investigation against China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology
• Exclusive: Coronavirus Bioweapon – How Chinese agents stole Coronavirus from Canada and weaponized it
• Exclusive Interview: Bioweapons Expert Dr. Francis Boyle on the Origins of Coronavirus (transcript)
• Must read piece published worldwide: Coronavirus – China’s Secret Plan to Weaponize Viruses
• Update: Chinese Biowarfare agents at Harvard University caught smuggling deadly viruses

According to CBC, Plummer, 67, was in Kenya, where he was a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the University of Nairobi’s collaborative centre for research and training in HIV/AIDS/STIs.
Dr. Larry Gelmon, who helped set up that meeting, said Plummer collapsed and was taken to hospital in Nairobi, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
No confirmed cause of death has yet been released.
Plummer was born and raised in Winnipeg, where he headed up Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory for several years.
He was also involved in an innovative research partnership between the University of Manitoba and the University of Nairobi, established before the world was very aware of HIV/AIDS.

“He helped to identify a lot of the key factors that are involved in HIV transmission in the early days,” said Keith Fowke, a professor in the medical microbiology and infectious diseases department at the University of Manitoba.
“He was so hopeful that he was on the path that would end with discovery of the HIV vaccine — the road he had started down almost 30 years ago,” said Plummer’s colleague, Dr. Allan Ronald.

What is not mentioned in the CBC report however is that Plummer worked in the same National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, Canada from where Chinese Biowarfare agent Xiangguo Qiu and her colleagues smuggled SARS Coronavirus to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology where it is believed to have been weaponized and leaked.

GreatGameIndia @GreatGameIndia

EXCLUSIVE#Coronavirus Bioweapon Thread

How China Stole Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponized Ithttps://greatgameindia.com/coronavirus-bioweapon/ …

Coronavirus Bioweapon – How China Stole Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponized It | GreatGameIndia

Coronavirus Bioweapon : How Chinese agents stole Coronavirus from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory and weaponized it into a Bioweapon.

greatgameindia.com

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8:14 AM – Jan 27, 2020

Infact, as GreatGameIndia reported in our exclusive report on Coronavirus Bioweapon, as Scientific Director Frank Plummer was the one who acquired the SARS Coronavirus sample of the Saudi patient at the NML Winnipeg Lab from Ron Fouchier, a leading virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands who was sent the virus by Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki who isolated and identified a previously unknown type of Coronavirus from the Saudi patient’s lungs.
Fouchier sequenced the virus from a sample sent by Zaki using a broad-spectrum “pan-coronavirus” real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method to test for distinguishing features of a number of known coronaviruses known to infect humans.
This Coronavirus sample arrived at Canada’s NML Winnipeg facility on May 4, 2013 from the Dutch lab received by Frank Plummer. The Canadian lab grew up stocks of the virus and used it to assess diagnostic tests being used in Canada. Winnipeg scientists worked to see which animal species can be infected with the new virus.
Research was done in conjunction with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s national lab, the National Centre for Foreign Animal Diseases which is housed in the same complex as the National Microbiology Laboratory.
This Winnipeg based Canadian lab was targeted by Chinese agents in what could be termed as Biological Espionage. The viruses was reportedly stolen from the Canadian lab by Chinese Biowarfare agent Xiangguo Qiu and her colleagues and smuggled to none other than the Wuhan Institute of Virology where the virus is believed to be weaponized and leaked.
Further, Frank Plummer was also working on HIV vaccine and interesting recently published study be Indian scientists found HIV-like injections in Wuhan Coronavirus – the key that made the jump to people possible. The Indian Scientists came under massive online criticism by Social Media experts and were  forced to withdraw their study, in retaliation of which now the Indian authorities have opened an investigation against China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Although it should be noted that now China has started using HIV vaccine to cure Coronavirus.
Frank Plummer was the key to the entire investigation on the origins of Coronavirus Bioweapon. But will the Canadian government open an investigation into this matter? Unlike their American counterparts who have charged the Chinese Biowarfare agents trying to smuggle deadly viruses from Harvard University, the deatils of the Canadian investigation on the Winnipeg Biological Espionage case is shrouded in secrecy.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/DxUwH-4vdk8/canadian-scientist-center-chinese-bio-espionage-probe-found-dead-africa

Adverum: Interim Gene Therapy Data in Macular Degeneration Phase 1 Trial

— Robust efficacy with evidence of a dose response —
— 6/6 patients rescue-injection-free in cohort 1, with 3 patients at 52 weeks —
— 4/6 patients rescue-injection-free in cohort 2 (lower dose) at 24 weeks —

— Company to host and webcast a discussion with key opinion leaders Sunday, February 9, at 10:00 am EST —

 Adverum Biotechnologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADVM), a clinical-stage gene therapy company targeting unmet medical needs in ocular and rare diseases, today announced new interim clinical data from the OPTIC Phase 1 dose-ranging clinical trial of ADVM-022 intravitreal injection gene therapy. OPTIC includes treatment-experienced patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The data are being presented today by David S. Boyer, M.D., senior partner, Retina-Vitreous Associates Medical Group and adjunct clinical professor of ophthalmology with the University of Southern California/Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, at the Angiogenesis, Exudation, and Degeneration 2020 Annual Meeting in Miami.
A copy of the presentation is available on the Adverum corporate website under Events and Presentations in the Investors section.
https://www.marketscreener.com/ADVERUM-BIOTECHNOLOGIES-27535811/news/Adverum-Biotechnologies-Reports-New-Interim-Data-from-Cohorts-1-and-2-of-OPTIC-Phase-1-Trial-of-ADVM-29967519/

1st U.S. attempt at CRISPR gene editing in cancer appears safe

The first test in the United States of the CRISPR gene-editing tool in cancer appears to be safe, but it’s too soon to know whether it’s effective, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday in the journal Science.
“The findings represent an important advance in the therapeutic application of gene editing and highlight the potential to accelerate development of cell-based therapies,” Jennifer Doudna of the University of California at Berkeley, who pioneered the gene editing technique, and her colleague Jennifer Hamilton write in an editorial.
The CRISPR approach has quickly become the preferred method of gene editing in research labs because of its ease of use compared with older techniques, and doctors have begun testing it to treat a number of diseases.
CRISPR-Cas9, used in this study, works like a pair of molecular scissors that can target and trim away parts of the genome and replace them with new stretches of DNA.
CRISPR has already shown promise at editing the genes of patients with beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease in clinical trials.
In the latest study, Dr. Edward Stadtmauer of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and colleagues tested it in three patients with advanced cancers. Two had the blood cancer multiple myeloma and one had sarcoma, a cancer that attacks connective tissues.
The researchers paired the use of CRISPR with a type of immunotherapy in which scientists harvest T-cells from a patient’s immune system, reprogram them to attack cancer cells and infuse them back into patients.
Engineered T cell therapies, such as CAR-T therapy (or chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy), can produce long-lasting remission in patients with blood cancers. But the treatments don’t work for many other kinds of cancer, the immunity can wane and they can cause serious side effects.
Stadtmauer and colleagues sought to use CRISPR to address some of those issues. They took immune system cells from the patients’ blood and used the CRISPR-Cas9 system to delete genes from the cells that might hamper the immune system’s ability to fight cancer, and engineered the cells to recognize and attack cancer cells.
The team then infused these cells back into the patients and watched to see if they would multiply. So far, the researchers have not seen any toxic side effects. The engineered T-cells started growing in all of the patients and lasted for up to nine months after the infusion.
“Until now, it has been unknown whether CRISPR-Cas9 edited T cells would be tolerated and thrive once reinfused into a human,” Doudna writes. “The big question that remains unanswered by this study is whether CRISPR-edited, engineered T cells are effective against advanced cancer.”
The pilot study was designed to track safety. Larger trials will be needed to test for efficacy. At the end of the trial, one patient died from advanced cancer, and the other two were receiving other treatments.
A key concern with CRISPR-edited cells is that the technique has been shown to create some “off-target” or unintended edits in the genome.
Study co-author Dr. Carl June, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania who pioneered CAR-T cell therapy, said the team found two off-target effects.
One was a rare change in the DNA code that occurred in 1 in 1,000 of the edited cells. The other was a chromosome translocation, in which a chromosome reattached itself to the wrong chromosome. This occurred in fewer than 1.5 percent of the infused cells, June said in an email to Reuters Health.
The infused cells with these unintended edits did not survive as well as the correctly edited genes, he said.
Based on the promising safety profile, June said it’s likely that many academic centers and companies will try the technique in further clinical trials.
“We hope to work with companies to advance this but at this point, there are no firm plans,” he said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/3bjFKU3, bit.ly/2v9MALe and bit.ly/3bhdCkj Science, online February 6, 2020.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-cancer-gene-editing/first-u-s-attempt-at-crispr-gene-editing-in-cancer-appears-safe-idUSKBN200309