Target $17
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4004362-allovir-stock-spikes-bank-of-america-starts-buy
Friday, August 18, 2023
Novartis: Sandoz spinoff planned for October
Invitation to Novartis Extraordinary General Meeting on September 15, 2023, and Shareholder Information Brochure issued
Sandoz Listing Prospectus published
Proposed distribution of a dividend-in-kind of Sandoz shares to Novartis shareholders: one Sandoz share for every five Novartis shares and one Sandoz ADR for every five Novartis ADRs
Sandoz Spin-off planned to occur on or around October 4, 2023
Repare a Cathie Wood Stock
Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management, is one of the most influential investors in the area of cutting-edge technology. She's known for her bullish bets on disruptive and innovative companies such as Tesla, Roku, and Shopify.
Over the years, Wood has also been an active buyer of smaller innovation-oriented companies like the biotech Repare Therapeutics (RPTX 11.02%). For instance, her ARK Genomic Revolution ETF owned more than 2.68 million shares of the company as of Aug. 17, 2023, making it the sixth-largest institutional shareholder.
Repare Therapeutics is a biotechnology company that focuses on developing precision oncology treatments for various types of cancer. The company's lead product candidate, camonsertib (also known as RP-3500), is a small molecule inhibitor of an important DNA damage response pathway, which is often mutated or dysregulated in cancer cells.
Camonsertib is presently in a basket of phase 1/2 clinical trials for a variety of solid tumors such as lung and ovarian cancer. This work is being conducted via a 2022 collaboration agreement with Swiss drugmaker Roche.
Per the terms of the deal, Repare is eligible for up to $1.172 billion in potential clinical, regulatory, commercial, and sales milestones, along with high-single-digit to high-teen royalties on the drug's net sales (if approved). As a novel anti-cancer therapy targeting patient populations with limited treatment options, camonsertib could become an important new option for patients and prescribers alike.
Repare is also trialing its wholly owned PKMYT1 inhibitor, lunresertib (RP-6306), as both a single agent and in combination therapy settings. Lunresertib is being evaluated in a wide array of solid tumors, including but not limited to breast, endometrial, head and neck, and soft-tissue cancers.
Repare's management team thinks the drug's total addressable market in the U.S. stands at over 65,000 patients annually. If true, lunresertib could be a megablockbuster drug in the making (annual sales exceeding $5 billion). The drug is presently in early-stage testing.
In addition, the company has an ongoing collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb (aka BMS). The partnership reportedly centers around the discovery of both known and unknown drug targets for various cancers. While this nearly 3-year-old deal has yet to produce a viable clinical candidate, it shows that the heavyweights in pharma are taking Repare's anti-cancer platform seriously.
Lastly, the developmental-stage biotech is in a fairly strong financial position. Repare exited the most recent quarter with cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities of $280.7 million. Management believes this amount should cover its operating expenses into 2026. Hence, the company shouldn't need to execute a large public offering anytime soon.
Despite this overwhelmingly bullish take by Wood and other analysts, investors would be wise to bear in mind that early-stage cancer drugs fail more often than not in the clinic. Consequently, this small-cap biotech stock is arguably best suited for aggressive investors with an elevated tolerance for risk.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/08/16/wall-street-thinks-this-cathie-wood-stock-could-ju/
Calliditas: FDA grants priority review for full approval for treatment of IgA Nephropathy
Calliditas Therapeutics AB(Nasdaq: CALT), (Nasdaq Stockholm: CALTX) ("Calliditas"), today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted the submission for the supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) for TARPEYO® (budesonide) delayed release capsules and granted Priority Review. The Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) goal date is 20 December 2023.
TARPEYO is currently approved under accelerated approval to reduce proteinuria in adults with primary IgA nephropathy (IgAN) at risk of rapid disease progression, generally a urine protein-to-creatinine ratio (UPCR) ≥1.5g/g.
Merck Phase 3 Kidney Cancer Trial Met Primary Endpoint
Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, today announced topline results from LITESPARK-005, the first positive Phase 3 trial investigating WELIREG, Merck’s oral hypoxia-inducible factor-2 alpha (HIF-2α) inhibitor. LITESPARK-005 is evaluating WELIREG for the treatment of adult patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) that has progressed following PD-1/L1 checkpoint inhibitor and vascular endothelial growth factor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (VEGF-TKI) therapies. In the trial, WELIREG showed a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) compared to everolimus, based on a pre-specified interim analysis conducted by an independent Data Monitoring Committee. A statistically significant improvement in the trial’s key secondary endpoint of objective response rate (ORR) was also demonstrated. A trend toward improvement in overall survival (OS), a dual primary endpoint, was observed; however, this result did not reach statistical significance. OS will be tested at a subsequent analysis. The safety profile of WELIREG in this trial was consistent with that observed in previously reported studies. Results will be presented at an upcoming medical meeting and shared with regulatory authorities.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/merck-announces-welireg-belzutifan-phase-104500135.html
'CDC tracking highly mutated new COVID variant in 3 countries, including US'
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that it was tracking a new, highly mutated lineage of the virus that causes COVID-19.
The lineage is named BA.2.86, and has been detected in the United States, Denmark and Israel, the CDC said in a post on messaging platform X.
“As we learn more about BA.2.86, CDC’s advice on protecting yourself from COVID-19 remains the same,” the agency said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) earlier on Thursday said in a post on X that it had classified BA.2.86 as a “variant under monitoring” due to the large number of mutations it carries.
The WHO said that, so far, only a few sequences of the variant have been reported from a handful of countries.
The new lineage, which has 36 mutations from the currently-dominant XBB.1.5 COVID variant “harkens back to an earlier branch” of the virus, explained Dr. S. Wesley Long, medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist.
He said it remains to be seen whether BA.2.86 will be able to out-compete other strains of the virus or have any advantage in escaping immune responses from prior infection or vaccination.
Early analysis indicates that the new variant “will have equal or greater escape than XBB.1.5 from antibodies elicited by pre-Omicron and first-generation Omicron variants,” Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center said in a slide deck published on Thursday. https://slides.com/jbloom/new_2nd_gen_ba2_variant?ftag=YHF4eb9d17#/12
The Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is the strain targeted by vaccines in upcoming COVID booster shots.
Bloom’s slides note that the most likely scenario is that BA.2.86 is less transmissible than current dominant variants, so never spreads widely, but more sequencing data is needed.
“My biggest concern would be that it could cause a bigger spike in cases than what we have seen in recent waves,” Dr. Long said. “The boosters will still help you fight off COVID in general.”
https://nypost.com/2023/08/18/us-cdc-tracks-new-lineage-of-virus-that-causes-covid/
Thursday, August 17, 2023
From Mad Men to machines? Big advertisers shift to AI
Some of the world's biggest advertisers, from food giant Nestle to consumer goods multinational Unilever, are experimenting with using generative AI software like ChatGPT and DALL-E to cut costs and increase productivity, executives say.
But many companies remain wary of security and copyright risks as well as the dangers of unintended biases baked into the raw information feeding the software, meaning humans will remain part of the process for the foreseeable future.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), which can be used to produce content based on past data, has become a buzzword over the past year, capturing the public's imagination and sparking interest across many industries.
Marketing teams hope it will result in cheaper, faster and virtually limitless ways to advertise products.
Investment is already ramping up amid expectations AI could forever alter the way advertisers bring products to market, executives at two top consumer goods companies and the world's biggest ad agency told Reuters.
The technology can be used to create seemingly original text, images, and even computer code, based on training, instead of simply categorizing or identifying data like other AI.
WPP, the world's biggest advertising agency, is working with consumer goods companies including Nestle and Oreo-maker Mondelez to use generative AI in advertising campaigns, its CEO Mark Read said.
"The savings can be 10 or 20 times," Read said in an interview. "Rather than flying a film crew down to Africa to shoot a commercial, we've created that virtually."
In India, WPP worked with Mondelez on an AI-driven Cadbury campaign with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, producing ads that 'featured' the actor asking passers-by to shop at 2,000 local stores during Diwali.
Small businesses used a microsite to generate versions of the ads featuring their own store that could be posted on social media and other platforms. Some 130,000 ads were created featuring 2,000 stores which gained 94 million views across YouTube and Facebook, according to WPP.
WPP has "20 young people in their early twenties who are AI apprentices" in London, Read said, and has partnered with the University of Oxford on courses focused on the future of marketing. The "AI for business" diploma offers training in data and AI for client leaders, practitioners, and WPP executives, according to WPP's website.
The team work under AI expert Daniel Hulme who was appointed chief AI officer at WPP two years ago.
"It's much easier to think about all the jobs that will be disrupted than all the jobs that will be created," Read said.
Nestle is also working on ways to use ChatGPT 4.0 and Dall-E 2 to help market its products, Aude Gandon, its Global Chief Marketing Officer and an ex-Google executive, said in an emailed statement.
"The engine is answering campaign briefs with great ideas and inspiration that are fully on brand and on strategy," Gandon said. "The ideas are then further developed by the creative team to ultimately become content that will be produced, for example for our websites."
While lawmakers and philosophers alike still debate whether content produced by generative AI models amounts to anything like human creativity, advertisers have already begun using the technology in their promotional campaigns.
IMAGINED SCENES
In one instance, Dutch gallery Rijksmuseum's research team went viral online on Sept 8, 2022 after using X-Ray to reveal new objects hidden in Baroque artist Johannes Vermeer's oil painting 'The Milkmaid'.
Less than 24 hours later, WPP used OpenAI's generator system DALL-E 2 to "reveal" its own imagined scenes beyond the borders of the painting's frame in a public YouTube ad for Nestle's La Laitière -- or Milkmaid -- yogurt and dairy brand.
Through almost 1,000 iterations, the video of Nestle's version of The Milkmaid generated 700,000 euros ($766,010) of "media value" for the Swiss food giant. Media value is the cost of advertising needed to generate the same public exposure.
WPP said the content cost it nothing to make. A spokesperson for the Rijksmuseum said it had an open data policy for non-copyrighted images, meaning anyone can use its images.
Nestle is not alone in its experiments.
Unilever, which owns more than 400 brands including Dove soap and Ben & Jerry's ice cream, has its own generative AI technology that can write product descriptions for retailers' websites and digital commerce sites, it said.
The company's TRESemmé haircare brand has used its AI content generator for written content and its automation tool for visual content on Amazon.co.uk.
But Unilever is concerned about copyrights, intellectual property, privacy and data, Aaron Rajan, its global vice president of Go To Market Technology, told Reuters.
The company wants to prevent its technology from reproducing human biases, like racial or gender stereotypes, that might be embedded in the data it processes.
"Ensuring that these models when you type in certain terms are coming back with an unstereotyped view of the world is really critical," he said.
Nestle's Gandon told Reuters the company was "keeping security and privacy top-of-mind."
Consumer companies are using data from retailers like Walmart, Carrefour and Kroger to power their AI tools, said Martin Sorrell, executive chair of advertising group S4 Capital and the founder of WPP.
"You've got two buckets of clients: one that is jumping in fully and the other that is saying 'let's experiment'," he said.
Some consumer goods firms remain wary of security risks or copyright breaches, industry executives say.
"If you want a rule of thumb: consider everything you tell an AI service as if it were a really juicy piece of gossip. Would you want it getting out?," said Ben King, VP of customer trust at Okta, a provider of online authentication services.
"Would you want someone else knowing the same sort of thing about you?," he added. "If not, don't tell the AI."
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