AstraZeneca Plc (NASDAQ: AZN) announced detailed results from the SERENA-2 Phase 2 trial of camizestrant in pretreated post-menopausal patients with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.
The data showed that camizestrant demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) at 75mg and 150mg dose levels versus Faslodex (fulvestrant) 500mg in patients previously treated with endocrine therapy.
In the overall population, camizestrant significantly reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 42% at a 75mg dose with a median PFS of 7.2 versus 3.7 months and 33% at a 150mg dose with median PFS of 7.7 versus 3.7 months compared to Faslodex, the current SERD standard of care.
Among the prespecified subgroup of patients with ESR1mutations, camizestrant showed a 67% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death at a 75mg dose and a 45% reduction at a 150mg dose.
The company also announced detailed results from the CAPItello-291 Phase 3 trial of capivasertib + Faslodex (fulvestrant) combo in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-low or negative, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.
Results showed capivasertib in combination with Faslodex demonstrated a 40% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death versus placebo plus Faslodex in the overall trial population.
A Texas federal judge has ordered Southwest Airlines to reinstate Charlene Carter, the flight attendant who made headlines after a jury ruled that she was unlawfully fired for expressing pro-life views and for criticizing her union.
In a decision filed on Dec. 5, five months after a jury decided in Carter’s favor, Judge Brantley Starr remarked, “Bags fly free with Southwest. But free speech didn’t fly at all with Southwest in this case.”
Starr granted Carter $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from Southwest; $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from the flight attendants’ union, Transport Workers Union of America Local 556; $150,000 in back pay, and $60,180.82 in prejudgment interest.
Although the jury voted that Carter deserved more than $5 million, laws and rules limit the amount that can be awarded in such cases.
“The jury also awarded front [or future] pay, but Carter would rather have her job back,” the judge wrote. “The Court reinstates Carter to her former position … If the Court opted for front pay over reinstatement, the court would complete Southwest’s unlawful scheme. Reinstatement is appropriate.”
Further, the judge explicitly ordered Southwest and Local 556 to share the jury’s verdict and Starr’s decision with all members of the union via email and to post the documents in conspicuous places for a 60-day period.
Starr’s order also forbids both the company and the union “from discriminating against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs, including—but not limited to—those expressed on social media and those concerning abortion.”
Southwest and Local 556 are required to inform employees that federal law prohibits such discrimination.
Both entities also must “reasonably accommodate Southwest flight attendants’ sincerely held religious beliefs, practices, and observances,” Starr wrote.
The judge’s rulings and rationale are contained in three documents totaling 43 pages in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.
Carter, who now lives in Colorado, fought for five years after she was fired. As The Epoch Times previously reported, Carter had become an outspoken opponent of abortion after she suffered physical and emotional effects from terminating a pregnancy years earlier, when she was 19.
After just within the past week China's governmentdramatically pivotedfrom its ultra-harsh 'zero Covid' policy - a policy which had triggered unprecedented widespread protests against communist authorities and health officials as in some instances they barricaded whole neighborhoods into strictly controlled quarantine zones - toward what appears a full embrace of a more lax 'Swedish model' type approach, national health authorities are prepping the population for the coming Covid wave, which could impact anestimated 80 to 90% of the Chinese population, according to a fresh projection by Feng Zijian, a former deputy chief at China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It’s going to be inevitable for most of us to get infected once, regardless of how the Covid-fighting measures are adjusted," Feng said Tuesday during a virtual conference discussing the zero Covid offramp at Tsinghua University in Beijing. As a senior health official, Feng is part of the central government's task force in implementing new policies which has moved away from the 'one size fits all' mentality that guided Beijing's health response since the pandemic began.
"Some 60% of Chinese people may be infected in the first wave, before the curve flattens, Feng predicted," as cited in Bloomberg. "By comparison, about 58% of the US population had been infected by February this year, according to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis released in April. That was up from 33.5% in December."
So it seems two years too late, China is learning the lessons of a number of countries that embraced a more flexible stance based on understanding herd immunity early, also centered on protecting the most vulnerable demographic, the elderly and the infirm, while not shuttering the economy wholesale.
Further, as of Thursday morning in China (local time), health authorities are reporting "more than 20,000 new cases a day at the moment, as outbreaks flare from Beijing to the southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou. That’s up from less than 100 a day in June, and zero for long periods of 2020."
But China says it's ready amid its more localized approach which will seek to prep hospitals, civic authorities, and the citizenry on "proper protective measures" - such as greater deployment of at home rapid antigen test kits. "It is better to direct the flood than block it," Lu Jiahai, a senior expert at the state drug regulator National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), said.
As for this approach looking more like a Swedish model policy (though don't expect anyone in Beijing to call it that), Caixin Global recently captured the following quotes which illustrate an astounding about-face in thinking on the pandemic among Chinese officials:
Although there are challenges in the implementation of home quarantine, the infection risks should not be exaggerated, said University of Hong Kong’s Jin.
"Scientific guidelines should be provided for everyone to follow with a clear accountability mechanism, as there have been many examples that even couples in the same room didn’t infect each other," said Jin, citing the experience in Hong Kong, where home isolation has been widely adopted after the worst outbreaks hit in the spring.
One resident in Beijing agreed. "I think it is more important to eliminate the irrational fear of being infected, and at the same time learn how to reduce the risk of cross-infection," Ma Qiao, who has studied preventative medicine, told Caixin.
Some of the new measures from the communist government call for isolating asymptomatic or mild Covid cases at home rather than in quarantine camps or hospitals for seven days. Anyone in contact with the infected would have to quarantine at home for five days instead of eight days at a camp and then at home.
The State Council further disbanded the rule for people to show negative Covid tests before entering public places. As the SCMP summarized of the new approach this week: "The new policy stressed that basic social and medical services need to be provided. People's movements, work and production should not be restricted in low-risk areas."
The Texas legislature has subpoenaed investment firm BlackRock, together with its subsidiaries and affiliate entities in the state, for documents related to the institution’s promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies.
The subpoena was issued by the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs last month and asks the sergeant-at-arms for the committee or any peace officer of the state to summon BlackRock and associated entities to appear before the committee on Dec. 15. The summoned entities are expected to produce for committee inspection “books, papers, documents, or other tangible things in the said corporation’s possession, custody, or control” which are related to “ESG factors” or “ESG integration practices,” the subpoena stated.
“The reason the committee is requesting the production of documents is to evaluate the investment practices of a financial services firm with a presence in Texas and how those practices affect the state’s public pensions,” it said.
In a statement to Fox, Texas Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, chairman of the committee on state affairs, said that the subpoenaed documents are necessary to “uncover” the extent to which investment entities like BlackRock have been “playing politics using Texans’ hard-earned money.”
Back in August, the committee sent letters to BlackRock, as well as other investment firms like State Street, Vanguard, and Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), to provide documents related to their ESG decision-making.
Hughes said that while each firm has produced documents, some have submitted “more than others.” But when it comes to BlackRock, the firm has “refused” to submit documents it deems as confidential or internal.
As a result, the committee had to issue a subpoena to BlackRock. “They have a legal duty to put their investors’ interests first, and we intend to make sure they do,” Hughes added.
The Epoch Times has reached out to BlackRock.
What’s ESG?
ESG investing advocates stakeholder capitalism instead of the conventional shareholder variant. Proponents of the ideology argue that traditional investments focus merely on maximizing profits, whereas stakeholder-centric ESG investing takes into consideration social advocacy, environment, and other progressive ideals which they claim will benefit society, and the company, in the long run.
ESG investing is one of the main reasons why many companies have drastically evolved in recent times. When previously businesses followed customer demand, nowadays they have mostly pivoted toward alternate goals and sacrificed profits for “green” and politically correct objectives.
Action Against BlackRock, ESG Investing Perils
BlackRock has been facing a series of actions from state authorities over its ESG investing practices. On Dec. 1, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis announced that his state will begin pulling out $2 billion in assets from the investment firm.
The state intends to completely divest its investments from BlackRock and relocate them to other fund management firms beginning next year.
In October, Missouri announced plans to remove $500 million worth of pension fund investments in BlackRock.
Earlier, Louisiana had announced a pending removal of $794 million from the company, while Utah and Arkansas declared their intentions to remove $100 million and $125 million, respectively.
In a recent interview with Breitbart, Missouri Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick equated ESG with leftist activism and pointed out that people’s money is being used by money managers to advance political and social causes that might not even be in the investors’ financial interests.
“ESG is just the latest acronym to describe what people want them to believe for good, well-intentioned advocacy [when] it’s really just political advocacy for things that the Democrats cannot get passed through the democratic process, and they’re using your money to do it,” he said.
About 430 million people around the world experience disabling hearing loss. In the United States, approximately 37.5 million adults report some trouble hearing. Hearing loss can happen when any part of the ear or the nerves that carry information on sounds to the brain do not work in the usual way.
For instance, damaged haircellsin the inner ear can lead to hearing loss. "These cells allow the brain to detect sounds," said Dr. Amrita Iyer, first author of a new paper published ineLife. Iyer was a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Andrew Groves, professor and Vivian L. Smith Endowed Chair in Neuroscience and of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, while she was working on this project.
Hair cells are generated during normal development but this ability is progressively lost after birth as mammals mature. "When hair cells are lost in mature animals, the cells cannot be naturally regenerated, which can lead to permanent hearing loss," Iyer explained. "In the current study, we looked closer into the possibility of promoting hair cell regeneration in mature animals using cell reprograming. Our approach involved the overexpression of various transcription factor combinations."
Transcription factors promote the expression of certain genes and prevent the expression of others. By changing the pattern of gene expression, the researchers hoped to lead cells to a state in which they would regenerate hair cells in mature animals similarly to what happens during development.
"We compared the reprogramming efficiency of the hair cell transcription factor ATOH1 alone or in combination with two other hair cell transcription factors, GFI1 and POU4F3, in mouse non-sensory cells in the cochlea, the part of the inner ear that supports hearing," Iyer said. "We did this at two timepoints—eight days after birth and 15 days after birth, assessing the extent of hair cell regeneration in mice."
To study the structure of the hair cell bundles generated by reprogramming, Iyer collaborated with Dr. Yeohash Raphael's lab at the University of Michigan to perform scanning electron microscopy imaging on the cochleae of mice conditionally overexpressing these transcription factors. The images clearly showed that the hair cell bundles were in accordance to what is observed on inner hair cells during development. Further studies showed that these cells also had some characteristics that suggested that they were capable of sensing sound.
"We found that although expressing ATOH1 with hair cell transcription factors GFI1 and POU4F3 can increase the efficiency of hair cell reprogramming in older animals compared to ATOH1 alone or GFI1 plus ATOH1, the hair cells generated by reprogramming at eight days of age—even with three hair cell transcription factors—are significantly less mature than those generated by reprogramming at postnatal day one," Iyer said.
"We suggest that reprogramming with multiple transcription factors is better able to access the hair cell differentiation gene regulatory network, but that additional interventions may be necessary to produce mature and fully functional hair cells."
These findings are key to advancing the existing understanding of the mammalian inner ear hair cell regeneration process. From a therapeutic standpoint, transcription factor-mediated reprogramming and the underlying biology associated with its function may enable fine-tuning of current gene therapy approaches for long-term hearing loss treatment.
More information: Amrita A Iyer et al, Cellular reprogramming with ATOH1, GFI1, and POU4F3 implicate epigenetic changes and cell-cell signaling as obstacles to hair cell regeneration in mature mammals, eLife (2022). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.79712
Is this the hill that leftists have chosen to die on?
Progressives and SJWs claim that there is no LGBT grooming agenda aimed at underage children, but all the evidence suggests otherwise.
Project Veritas has released another discomforting hidden camera interview that essentially dashes any arguments that leftists have in defense of LGBT propaganda in schools, with blatant sexualization of kids being used in Chicago.
Joseph Bruno, Dean of Students at the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, is caught on camera bragging about inviting representatives from a local LGBT Health Center to the school to talk to students ages 14-18 during pride month.
He admits that the students were given sex toys to "play with" while teaching the kids about "queer sex". Bruno appears excessively excited while talking about the event, and suggests that it's a "cool part of his job" ostensibly because he doesn't have to worry about oversight.
The school also engages in drag queen story hour events for very young children.
While the Parker School is a private school, the Dean hints that parents are not specifically notified of these LGBT sex education events and neither are the trustees.
While drag queen events have been caught on numerous occasions crossing the line of what is legal in terms of child exposure and sexualization, the classes described by Bruno enter a whole other realm of grooming.
Is it really "bigoted" or "extreme" to argue that this is unacceptable behavior to expose children to in schools? Can't we all agree to "leave those kids alone" until they are competent adults?
Loudoun County School Board members voted to fire embattled superintendent Scott Ziegler after a special grand jury report said he lied about a rape committed by a transgender student.
The board voted unanimously on Dec. 6 to fire Ziegler without cause, the Virginia school district’s spokesman, Wayde Byard, told The Epoch Times.
The move came after a special grand jury in Loudoun County released a 91-page report on Dec. 5 condemning Ziegler and other school officials for displaying a “stunning lack of openness” about the incidents.
The grand jury, made up of randomly selected Loudoun County residents, said Ziegler lied when he said there were no records of assault occurring in school bathrooms.
Former Loudoun County school superintendent Scott Ziegler attends a school board meeting in Ashburg, Va., on June 22, 2021. (LCPS/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
ABC7News reported on Dec. 7 that Ziegler will receive 12 months of severance pay per his contract. Byard did not confirm to The Epoch Times whether a severance package had been promised.
The Virginia school district made national headlines last year after a father accused the district at a board meeting of covering up his 15-year-old daughter’s rape by a skirt-wearing biological boy.
While he was speaking, the man was tackled by police, knocked to the ground, dragged out, and charged with disorderly conduct.
After the incident, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked the state’s attorney general, Jason Miyares, to conduct a full investigation into the school district following accusations a transgender student sexually assaulted two different girls.
The 15-year-old victim’s family and officials said a “gender-fluid” boy sexually assaulted her on May 28, 2021 at Stone Bridge High School in the girls’ restroom.
Five months later, the same transgender student was accused of assaulting a second female student on Oct. 6, 2021, at Broad Run High School, after the district transferred him there.
In that incident, the transgender student was accused of forcing a female student into an empty classroom, holding her against her will, and touching her inappropriately.
In October of 2021, a Virginia judge found the transgender student guilty of sexual assault charges involving the 15-year-old.
The following month, the transgender student pleaded no contest to sexual battery in the second incident. He was sentenced to probation at a residential treatment facility until his 18th birthday in June 2024.
Community members attend a meeting of the Loudoun County School Board meeting in Loudoun County, Va., on June 22, 2021. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
As part of the sentence, he was ordered to register as a sex offender, but a judge reversed that decision.
In their report, the special grand jury said Ziegler denied the first sexual assault during a school board meeting in June 2021.
At the meeting, according to the report, a board member asked Ziegler, “Do we have assaults in our bathrooms or in our locker rooms, regularly? I would hope not but I’d like clarification.”
The superintendent responded that there were no records of assault occurring in the school bathrooms, the report said.
Another witness testified the superintendent’s statement was a “bald-faced lie.” In response to that testimony, the grand jury wrote in the report, “We agree.”
The report also noted that Stone Bridge High School principal Tim Flynn failed to mention the first sexual assault in an email to the school community on the day it happened. Ziegler signed off on the email, the report indicated.
Ziegler said at the time he misunderstood the question from the board member.
A bathroom is set aside for transgender students at the University of California Irvine, in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
He said that he had interpreted the question to be about whether the school had records of assaults happening in restrooms involving transgender and gender-fluid students, according to the report.
The report said there were several “decision points” for senior school administrators—up to and including the superintendent—to be “transparent” and step in and alter the sequence of events leading up to the second sexual assault on Oct. 6.
