Werewolf Shares Climb As Initial-Stage Solid Tumors Study Kicks-off

 Werewolf Therapeutics 

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 has initiated patient dosing in a Phase 1/1b clinical trial evaluating WTX-124, its lead INDUKINET molecule targeting IL-2 for the treatment of solid tumors.

The Phase 1/1b clinical trial will evaluate WTX-124 as a monotherapy and in combination with Merck's KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab) therapy in patients with immunosensitive advanced or metastatic solid tumors who have failed standard of care, including checkpoint inhibitor therapy.

Daniel J. Hicklin, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said, "We are thrilled to share this important milestone for Werewolf of dosing the first patient in our Phase 1/1b trial of WTX-124. We believe WTX-124 presents a tremendous opportunity, not only to improve outcomes for patients with hard-to-treat solid tumors but also to validate our novel approach of developing conditionally activated cytokines as innovative cancer therapy.”

WTX-124 is designed to target delivery of a highly potent, wild-type IL-2 cytokine to the tumor microenvironment. The selective release of IL-2 in the TME induces anti-tumor immune responses resulting in tumor regressions in preclinical models while minimizing the toxicities associated with systemic delivery of recombinant IL-2.

Randi Isaacs, Chief Medical Officer, stated, ”WTX-124 has been designed to be active only within the TME, with the goal of reducing toxicity and enhancing anti-tumor activity. We look forward to advancing this trial to further our understanding of WTX-124 as a potential therapy for the treatment of people living with cancer.”

https://www.benzinga.com/general/biotech/22/09/28719163/werewolf-shares-climb-as-initial-stage-solid-tumors-study-kicks-off

Self-harm hashtags up 500 percent on Twitter: research

 The prevalence of Twitter hashtags related to self-harm has increased about 500 percent in the past year, despite many of those posts violating the platform’s policy on the subject, according to a new report. 

The report from the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent research organization that studies misinformation and hate on social media platforms, and Rutgers University states that users have made tens of thousands of posts per month related to self-harm since October. Many of the posters appeared to be adolescents and young adults, according to the report. 

The report states that 5Rights, a United Kingdom-based children’s digital rights charity, alerted Twitter to the hashtag #shtwt, which stands for “self-harm Twitter,” in October. 5Rights said the platform’s algorithms were promoting profiles that use this hashtag to other users who were searching “self-harm” instead of connecting them with resources to help. 

Twitter said it blocked tweets using the hashtag and other related ones in response, but posts related to self-harm have grown exponentially since the company was notified about the matter in October, the report states. As a part of that overall rise, the institute found the number of posts with hashtags related to #shtwt have also specifically been increasing.

Twitter policy bans users from promoting or encouraging suicide or self-harm, including but not limited to by asking other people for encouragement to commit self-harm or suicide or by sharing information, strategies or instructions for doing so. 

A Twitter spokesperson told The Hill that self-harm is an “extremely complex and sensitive” issue that the company takes very seriously. They said Twitter works with a group of independent experts to determine its approach to the issue.

The spokesperson said Twitter is continuing to review its policies with experts and based on research like the report so it is able to find a balance between allowing people who are struggling to have a voice and taking down content that exploits those struggles.

“The safety of the people who use our service is our priority and we are committed to building a safer Internet and improving the health of the public conversation,” the spokesperson said.

Twitter said the company has other tools it uses like not allowing known associated terms to appear in the top of search. The company said it partners with third-party organizations to direct people who are searching for information on self-harm to resources using #ThereIsHelp prompts.

These prompts are available in more than two dozen countries, including the United States.

The report states that posts with the hashtag #shtwt are usually accompanied by images of severe and potentially life-threatening self-inflicted wounds. The posts are “praised, celebrated, and encouraged” by some users, it said. 

The institute also found rapidly growing Twitter communities that glorify eating disorders and mass shootings, saying these signal that its discoveries on self-harm and suicide appear to be the “tip of the iceberg.” 

Researchers additionally found evidence that predators who claim to be minors have engaged with these online communities to further encourage self-harm, according to the report.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3620870-self-harm-hashtags-up-500-percent-on-twitter-research/

India develops its first cervical cancer vaccine

 

The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's biggest vaccine maker, has developed the country's first cervical cancer shot that will hit the market soon, the company and the government said on Thursday.

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women globally, with an estimated 604,000 new cases and 342,000 deaths in 2020, according to the World Health Organization. About 90% of the new cases and deaths worldwide occurred in low- and middle-income countries that year.

Two human papillomavirus (HPV) types, 16 and 18, are responsible for at least 70% of cervical cancers, and India's Department of Biotechnology said the Indian vaccine would work on HPV types 16 and 18, as well as 6 and 11.

Merck & Co and GSK Plc are the main makers of HPV vaccines.

"The indigenously developed vaccine will make our country self-sufficient in curbing female mortality caused by cervical cancer," SII Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla said in a statement.

He told reporters the vaccine would be out for sale in a few months, first for the Indian market and then the world. It may be priced between 200 rupees and 400 rupees ($2.51-$5.03) and the company will aim to produce about 200 million doses in two years, Reuters partner ANI cited Poonawalla as saying.

The vaccine will be administered via injection in two doses among 9-14 year olds and in three doses for those between 15 and 26.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/GSK-PLC-9590199/news/India-develops-its-first-cervical-cancer-vaccine-41671092/

Marijuana with high THC levels linked to addiction, psychiatric illness

 Ethan Andrew started smoking marijuana during his sophomore year of high school in Colorado to help with his anxiety. 

Like many teens, he said he thought it was "just weed" and did not see the harm in smoking the popular drug containing THC, the active chemical found in cannabis that produces a "high."

His causal marijuana use turned to smoking potent cannabis flower and concentrates, known as dabs, which contain high levels of THC. Andrew said he smoked every day from morning to night. 

"I couldn't think or sleep without it," the 23-year-old told Fox News. "When you're a stoner, you think, ‘I'll be fine. In the future, I'll clean myself up.’"

However, it was too late. Two years after becoming an avid marijuana user, Ethan was only 18 when he developed cannabis-induced psychosis, a condition including severe hallucinations, delusions and paranoia.

"I had to quit my job because the voices in my head were so distracting," Ethan said, adding that the worst symptom was confusing dreams with reality. "I'd wake up and tell my friends, 'Yeah, remember when we hung out and did that?' And they would have no idea what I'm talking about."

A recent study review published by Lancet Psychiatry found high-cannabis-potency products are associated with a greater risk of psychosis and addiction called cannabis use disorder (CUD).

"The content of THC not many decades ago was 2%-3%," Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told Fox News, adding that marijuana is considered high in potency if the product contains more than 10% THC.

"Now, the average content of THC in the United States is 14-16%," she said. "There are [cannabis] varieties that have a content that goes to 30% THC." 

Today, manufacturers have found ways to add marijuana into vaping devices, edibles and wax that can contain nearly 100% pure THC.

"We're seeing more and more young men with these type of episodes because the cannabis that they are consuming has higher contents of THC that have the highest risk for triggering a psychotic episode and becoming addicted," Dr. Volkow said. "It’s much more widely available and a larger percentage of them smoking."

Currently, 19 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational marijuana, while 37 states have approved medical use. That, Dr. Volkow said, does not mean cannabis use is harmless, especially on adolescent brain development.

"The consumption of marijuana as a young person modifies the brain in ways that make it more susceptible later on to that rewarding and addictive effects of other drugs," she said. "So, you start to mess around by smoking marijuana, you're going to interfere with that process, which is crucial because ultimately who we are very much is a reflection of how our brain works."

Manufacturers have found ways to add marijuana into vaping devices, edibles, and wax that can contain nearly 100% pure THC.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., alongside Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., recently introduced the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act aiming to legalize cannabis on a federal level and establish a federal cannabis tax.

States including Massachusetts, Colorado and California, where cannabis is legal, are already benefiting from state and local taxes by the billions, said Beau Whitney, one of the nation’s leading experts on the economics of cannabis, adding that a federal tax would only embolden the illicit, dangerous market.

"Last year, only $25 billion worth of cannabis was sold legally while $75 to $80 [billion] was sold in the illegal market," Whitney said. "Pricing plays a key role in incentivizing consumers to participate legally. If the price is too high, they'll go back onto into the illicit market."

A hemp extract processing and distribution plant in Binghamton, New York, seen in April 2021. (Getty Images, File)

After seeing firsthand how marijuana affected her son and husband, Aubree Adams moved her family out of Colorado – one of the first states that made it legal, which she described as "ground zero for the marijuana expansion movement" – to Texas where it is still illegal to possess any substance containing THC. She started Every Brain Matters, an advocacy group supporting and educating families on the harmful effects of cannabis.

"In the state of Colorado, the number one drug found in completed suicides ages 10 to 18 is marijuana," she said. She added that she believed families like hers have been "fed a bag of lies that cannabis is harmless." 

Adams went on, "THC is the perfect drug to hijack our kids' brains and lead them down a path of addiction and mental illness."

It has been five years since Ethan Andrew made a full recovery from cannabis-induced psychosis.

"I got so paranoid that my brain was damaged that I got an MRI, and they did find some damage to my white matter. I'm too traumatized to even smoke weed again."

https://www.foxnews.com/health/marijuana-high-thc-levels-linked-addiction-psychiatric-illness-study-finds

Despite leaving government, Anthony Fauci ain’t going anywhere

 Old habits die hard, especially for the outgoing head of President Biden’s COVID-19 task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

As you may have heard, the 81-year-old announced last week that he will be stepping down from his role in the administration and as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Next stop: Tony Fauci, private citizen. But save this column for early 2023: Because it is virtually guaranteed that Fauci will not forfeit his greatest love and habit: Appearing on camera.

Since the coronavirus hit the United States in early 2020, Fauci has conducted hundreds upon hundreds of interviews. He originally was seen as a necessary voice to educate the public about what COVID-19 is and how to best protect ourselves from it, and rightly so given his resume on infectious diseases. But Fauci quickly became overexposed in ways that had little to do with the virus, but about the man himself.

InStyle magazine, for example, featured Fauci on its cover, not in a lab coat, but lounging by his pool. Headline: “Dr. Fauci says, ‘With all due modesty, I think I’m pretty effective.’”

Fauci also posed for magazine covers for People, Time and The Washingtonian, among others. The Guardian dubbed him “The Sexiest Man Alive.” And Brad Pitt scored an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of a sexy Fauci on Saturday Night Live.

NBC National Affairs analyst John Heilemann even went so far as to argue that Republicans intentionally wanted COVID to stay around, which is why many are critical of Fauci.

“If people follow Fauci, there’s a likelier chance that COVID will go away. And if COVID goes away it’s bad right now for Republicans,” Heilemann once said, “It’s just the math on this — the political math is not hard to figure out.”

In retrospect, a turning point for some in their perception of Fauci came in July 2020. The Major League Baseball season was finally underway in Washington after being delayed for almost four months when the Nationals hosted the New York Yankees. Fauci was chosen to throw out the first pitch and stayed to watch the game in a near-empty stadium.

Then a photo emerged that quickly went viral: Fauci, smiling and chatting with two other people without wearing a mask over his nose and mouth, a precaution he insisted was needed in public settings, especially for older Americans, who may be more susceptible to the virus, and especially at a time when no vaccine was available.

Fauci was confronted about this apparent hypocrisy but claimed he was drinking water at the time and lowered his mask for just a moment. He called the criticism “mischievous.”

But the photo showed him with two hands on his phone and not on a bottle of water. The right thing for Fauci to say at the time was that he should have been more careful and should follow his own rules. That never happened. 

But as we would learn, Fauci is much like Donald Trump: He almost never admits a mistake.

From there, the distrust continued to grow as the pandemic wore on during an election year. In April 2020, Fauci had publicly bucked President Trump’s claim that a vaccine could be available before the end of 2020, instead predicting its availability more likely in the later stages of 2021. (The first jabs of the vaccine were administered in December 2020.)

Fauci also flip-flopped on mask wearing itself by first recommending that they weren’t needed as the pandemic came, before recommending them and even going so far as to advise double-masking as the best way to go late in 2020. He also once wrote that the kind of masks that the average citizen would buy in a store was not “really effective” in preventing infection.

“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material,” Fauci said in a February 2020 email.

And then there were the confrontations on Capitol Hill with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) over the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) funding for gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Technology, which is located in the same city where the novel coronavirus originated. Fauci, to this day, says it’s almost impossible for COVID-19 to have originated in a lab despite growing evidence to the contrary.

“Anyone that knows even a little bit about virology will tell you that it would be molecularly impossible for those viruses to have turned into, either accidentally or deliberately, SARS-COVID-2,” Fauci told Fox News Channel anchor Neil Cavuto recently. “People seem to disregard that and go on with a wide variety of conspiracy theories.”

Republicans promise hearings starring Fauci on Capitol Hill if they take back the House of Representatives. Fauci says his retirement isn’t timed to avoid them and plans to willingly appear.

So in addition to what promises to be highly watched hearings if the GOP takes back the House, there is also Fauci’s tendency to almost never say “no” to an interview request. And as a contributor on cable or broadcast news, Fauci would undoubtedly be featured more than most.

As to where he ends up, the best bet is MSNBC. As Freud said, there is no such thing as an accident, and it’s certainly no accident that Fauci ran to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for an exclusive and fawning interview on the same day the retirement was announced earlier this month.

“Thank you for a lifetime, so far, of service,” Maddow told Fauci last week. “I can’t wait to see what you do next.”

Oh, it’s fairly certain what Fauci will do next: Appear on the air — often. 

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3621864-despite-leaving-government-anthony-fauci-aint-going-anywhere/

As Democrats Offer Massive New Benefits, a Refresher on Pandemic Check Writing

 Americans may have difficulty keeping up with the reckless pace of spending coming out of Washington these days. Last week, it was college debt cancellation worth up to $20,000 per person (across over 40 million people). Nonpartisan experts estimate it will cost $500 billion or more—or at least four times the price of last year’s expanded child tax credit. The week before, it was over $350 billion for green new deal spending, including $7,500 subsidies for Americans who buy electric vehicles.

Whenever supposedly transformational new benefits like these are rolled out, proponents simply ignore existing programs or dismiss them as woefully inadequate. In reality, before the pandemic there were already over 80 federal programs that spent almost $1 trillion per year on education, energy, food, housing, health, income, and other support for low-income individuals and families. But post-pandemic, government check-writing advocates are taking it to another level—by also ignoring the unprecedented federal checks just paid to tens of millions during the pandemic, including to many poised to receive the latest new benefits and subsidies, too.

The first and most widely distributed pandemic payments were stimulus checks paid to an estimated 85 percent of all US households. Adults first received $1,200 and children $500 under the March 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. A second round of checks followed a December 2020 law, which provided $600 per adult and child. The Biden administration then sent a third round of checks via the March 2021 American Rescue Plan, which provided another $1,400 per adult and child. Like the prior rounds, those checks were paid to individuals earning up to $75,000 and married couples earning up to $150,000 per year. All told, a typical household of four collected $11,400, costing taxpayers a staggering $869 billion—more than the annual US defense budget.

Other federal checks provided enlarged benefits to those laid off or prevented from working by the pandemic. Starting in March 2020, $600-per-week (and later $300-per-week) federal bonuses increased the value of all other state and federal unemployment benefits. Paid to a peak of 33 million in June 2020, those bonuses were so generous that in mid-2020 the resulting benefits were greater than the former paychecks of two-thirds of recipients.

A new temporary program called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) offered weekly checks to millions never before eligible, including independent contractors, the self-employed, and those who worked too little to qualify for regular unemployment checks. PUA featured infamously loose eligibility criteria that invited record fraud. It paid checks to a peak of 15 million in August 2020, and many of its recipients were younger than those on regular unemployment benefits—including many who will qualify for college debt cancellation, too.

Millions also benefitted from unemployment extensions. Those exhausting up to six months of state unemployment checks could collect over a year of federal checks under one pandemic program, which supported over 6 million in early 2021. A second federal program offered another 20 weeks of checks to millions more. All told, an unemployed individual receiving just average state benefits of $325 per week could collect an astonishing $46,000 in state and federal unemployment checks. That includes $38,000 in temporarily expanded and extended federal benefits lasting up to 18 months. Federal taxpayers will pick up the record $700 billion tab.

The final wave of federal checks were the increased child tax credits of up to $3,600 paid to 65 million children in 2021. In a controversial break with that program’s past, even non-working parents qualified for monthly checks, making that temporary expansion akin to work-free welfare checks for millions.

This list doesn’t include tens of billions of dollars in expanded federal food stamps, rental subsidies, childcare benefits, and much more. It also doesn’t count universal basic income checks, additional stimulus checks, and other payments state and local governments are making using $500 billion in federal pandemic aid. Those expanded benefits, like the cost of college debt cancellation, were simply added to the already massive federal debt, too.

While federal pandemic benefit expansions have now mostly expired, recent studies suggest Americans continue to have over $2 trillion in excess savings as a result. Even some Democrats blame those expansions for the 40-year-high inflation hitting low-income Americans the hardest. But none of that has prevented the administration’s latest $500 billion surge in deficit spending, which arrived just a week after President Joe Biden promised “we’re cutting deficits to fight inflation.” If only that were true.

https://www.aei.org/poverty-studies/as-democrats-offer-massive-new-benefits-a-refresher-on-pandemic-check-writing/