Dialysis group Fresenius Medical Care said on Wednesday that data including medical records on 500,000 patients and former patients were stolen from a U.S. subsidiary's data warehouse.
"The incident may have affected approximately 500,000 patients, former patients, guarantors and 200 staff located across several states, U.S. territories and four countries," the German company said in a statement.
It said it launched an investigation with the help of a forensic firm after subsidiary Cardiovascular Consultants Ltd on Sept. 29 became aware of a security incident affecting some of its U.S. computer systems and an intruder claimed to have stolen data.
"The investigation has determined that specific systems were accessed and data were encrypted and stolen by the intruder," it added.
Fresenius Medical said it does not expect the incident to have a material impact on its finances and operations but potential future litigation and potential reputational damage would have to be considered.
Japan’s Taisho Pharmaceutical looks like it could be heading into private ownership, thanks to a management buyout offer (MBO) that could value the company at almost $5 billion.
The consumer health and over-the-counter medicine manufacturer – the largest in Japan and known for brands like Lipovitan energy drinks and Pabron cough/cold range – reckons that the manoeuvre will improve the efficiency of the business, allow it to expand overseas and generate a better return on R&D investments.
The company also has a small prescription pharma business with products like Lusefi (luseogliflozin) for type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis therapy Bonviva (ibandronate), and if the MBO goes through it plans to forge alliances with “bio-ventures and pharmaceutical companies” to expand its range.
The plan drawn up by Taisho’s biggest shareholder, the founding Uehara family, would involve buying up all of the company’s common stock, including American depositary receipts (ADRs) and stock acquisition rights, and delisting them.
If it goes through, current chief executive Akira Uehara would retain leadership of the company, while executive vice president Shigeru Uehara and company director Ken Uehara would also keep their respective roles.
The offer of JPY 8,620 ($58.56) per share offer is a 50% premium on Taisho’s average closing share price in the prior six months, valuing the company at around 710 billion yen (around $4.75 billion). The company is predicting full-year sales of JPY 319 billion for fiscal 2023.
The buyout team said the transaction would help fuel growth at the company, which has been struggling with a lacklustre domestic market amid the cost-of-living crisis, as rising prices coupled with stagnant wages place a burden on household budgets in Japan. There will also be a shake-up of staffing and pay packages, according to their proposal document.
Along with expansion overseas, the MBO team also want to invest more in the infrastructure needed to sell its brands online, a potentially costly initiative that could face resistance from shareholders.
A recent report on the Nikkei Asia news service said that more and more Japanese businesses are looking to management buyouts and going private in order to reduce the costs they face as publicly-held companies.
Analysts at Japan Catalyst write in a research note that Taisho has already been pushing a globalisation strategy through deals such as its acquisitions of overseas OTC medicine companies like Vietnam’s Duoc Hau Giang Pharmaceutical and France’s UPSA, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s former consumer health business, adopting an uncommon strategy for Japanese companies.
“The OTC pharmaceutical industry is currently amidst a wave of global restructuring, as seen with major pharmaceutical companies spinning out their OTC businesses, such as Takeda Pharmaceutical’s carve-out of Alinamin Pharmaceuticals, GSK and Pfizer’s carve-out of Haleon, and Johnson & Johnson’s carve-out of Kenvue,” write the analysts.
“In this external environment, we consider that the MBO is a rational management decision to exercise stronger leadership and engage in more dynamic business activities,” they add, although they note that the offer price is low and “disregards the rights of minority shareholders.”
Trading in the options of Cerevel Therapeutics Holdings Inc experienced an unusual surge along with its stock price in the days before Wednesday's announcement that AbbVie would buy the drug developer in a multi-billion dollar deal.
AbbVie said after the market close on Wednesday it would buy Cerevel for about $8.7 billion in a bid to replace revenue as its huge-selling arthritis drug Humira faces a raft of new competitors. The announcement came minutes after Reuters reported a deal was near.
Cerevel's shares, which had already risen 42% over the past three sessions, jumped another 16% to as high as $42.75 in trading after the bell. AbbVie's offer was priced at $45 a share.
The stock's rise over the last few sessions was accompanied by a sharp increase in options activity. Call and put options allow investors to buy and sell shares at fixed prices in the future and are used as hedges or ways to speculate on share price movements.
Cerevel's options, which until the recent flurry of activity traded less than 320 contracts a day on average, saw about 51,000 contracts change hands over the last three sessions, according to Trade Alert data.
"This is 100% suspicious," Matt Amberson, principal at options analytics firm ORATS, said. "I am almost certain that this was driven by someone in the know."
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did not respond to a request for comment out of business hours. Spokespeople for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cerevel and AbbVie did not respond to a request for comment outside of business hours.
The options activity took off in sync with the stock on Dec. 4, with traders buying short-dated upside call options on Cerevel - contracts that would make money if the stock jumped significantly in a short time.
On Dec. 4, Cerevel options volume jumped to 6,500 contracts, with call options betting on the stock rising above $35 by mid-January trading nearly 1,800 contracts. The stock had closed at $26 in the prior session.
A group of NYC councilmembers showed up to City Hall Wednesday for a council meeting wearing matching t-shirts that called for a “ceasefire” in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, sparking outrage among some observers.
“Proud to stand in solidarity with some of my @nyccouncil colleagues today at the Stated Meeting calling for an immediate and permanent #ceasefire,” Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez (D-Brooklyn) shared on social media with a photo of herself with eight others, including Shahana Hanif, Tiffany Cabán and Charles Barron.
The latest showing from some of the more progressive members of the council over the Israel-Palestine conflict drew little outrage in Chambers until the very end of the nearly two-hour meeting.
Brooklyn Councilman Kalman Yeger questioned where the councilmembers have been when it came to atrocities that had been carried out by Hamas.
“It’s good to see someone caring about life. If you missed them wearing a sweatshirt with ‘Ceasefire’ at any time when Hamas was reigning daily missiles on Israel or any time in their 22 months that they served on this council prior to Oct. 7, I missed it too,” Yeager snapped
A group of council members wore ‘ceasefire’ shirts to Wednesday’s meeting.JenGutierrezNYC/X
“If you missed them wearing t-shirts that said ‘Free the Hostages’ or ‘Don’t rape women,’ ‘Don’t cut open the stomach of a live woman and stab a baby to death while the woman is still alive’ maybe those are too many words to put on one shirt.”
The shirts also faced some swift backlash on social media with former state Assemblyman Daniel Rosenthal piling on.
“Astonishing to see so-called ‘progressives’ call for a ceasefire while Hamas broke a previous ceasefire because they wanted to keep the female hostages to rape them,” he fired off on X.
This wasn’t the first time those lawmakers have inflamed others while in session over the conflict.
Barron, who was a member of the militant Black Panther Party, wenton an anti-Israel rantduring a meeting back in October, calling for a “Free Palestine.”
Guyana’s president told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his country is taking every necessary step to protect itself from Venezuela, which has ordered its state-owned companies to explore and exploit oil and minerals in the vast Essequibo region, which Guyana considers its own.
When asked if he has requested military assistance, President Irfaan Ali said his government is reaching out to allies and regional partners, some of which Guyana has defense agreements with, to protect Essequibo.
The region makes up two-thirds of the country.
“We take this threat very seriously, and we have initiated a number of precautionary measures to ensure the peace and stability of this region,” Ali said in the brief phone interview.
He noted that Guyana’s Defense Force also is speaking with counterparts in other countries but did not say which ones.
“Should Venezuela proceed to act in this reckless and adventurous manner, the region will have to respond,” he said. “And that is what we’re building. We’re building a regional response.”
Ali spoke a day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said he would immediately grant operating licenses for exploration and exploitation in Essequibo and ordered the creation of local subsidiaries of Venezuelan public companies, including oil giant PDVSA and mining conglomerate Corporación Venezolana de Guayana.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but years of mismanagement and economic sanctions imposed by the US against Maduro’s government have hurt PDVSA and subsidiaries.
When asked if he has requested military assistance, Ali said his government is reaching out to allies and regional partners, some of which Guyana has defense agreements with, to protect Essequibo.AFP via Getty Images
Maduro also announced the creation of a Comprehensive Defense Operational Zone for the territory in dispute.
It would be similar to special military commands that operate in certain regions of Venezuela.
“The announcements by Venezuela are in full defiance of international law,” Ali said.
“And any country that so openly defies important international bodies should be of concern not only for Guyana but for all of the world.”
He said Venezuela’s actions can severely disrupt the region’s stability and peaceful coexistence.
Guyana expects to bring up the issue at Wednesday’s UN Security Council meeting.
The president said in a statement late Tuesday that his administration has reached out to the U.S., neighboring Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, the UN secretary general and the US Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
Ali also accused Venezuela of defying a ruling that the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands issued last week.
It ordered Venezuela not to take any action until the court rules on the countries’ competing claims, a process expected to take years.
Venezuela’s government condemned Ali’s statement, accusing Guyana of acting irresponsibly and allegedly giving the U.S. Southern Command a green light to enter the Essequibo region.
Venezuela called on Guyana to resume dialogue and leave aside its “erratic, threatening and risky conduct.”
On Wednesday, the United Nations issued a statement highlighting the recent ruling by the International Court of Justice barring parties from any action that “might aggravate or extend the dispute or make it more difficult to resolve.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres “strongly supports the use of solely peaceful means to settle international disputes,” the world body said.
Venezuela’s government rejected the UN’s comments, saying it does not recognize the mandatory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.
The diplomatic fight over the Essequibo region has flared over the years but intensified in 2015 after ExxonMobil announced it had found vast amounts of oil off its coast.
Venezuela insists the region belongs to it because Essequibo was within its boundaries during the Spanish colonial period.
Venezuela rejects the border that international arbitrators drew in 1899, when Guyana was still under British rule.
The dispute escalated after Maduro held a referendum on Sunday in which Venezuelans approved his claim of sovereignty over Essequibo.
Ali called the referendum a “failure” and said Guyana is preparing for any eventuality.
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, working with Imperial College London, King's College London and University of Cambridge, have shown that an influx of water and ions into immune cells allows them to migrate to where they're needed in the body.
Our bodies respond to illness by sending out chemical signals called chemokines, which tell immune cells called T cells where to go to fight the infection. This process had already been associated with a protein called WNK1, which activates channels on the cell surface, allowing ions (salts like sodium or potassium) to move into cells. Until now, it was not clear why ion influx was needed for T cells to move.
Through a study published in Nature Communications, the researchers imaged mouse T cells and observed that, following a chemokine signal, WNK1 is activated at the front of the cells, called the "leading edge."
The team showed that the activation of WNK1 opens channels on the leading edge, resulting in an influx of water and ions. They propose that this flow of water causes the cells to swell on the front side, creating space for the 'actin cytoskeleton'—the scaffolding inside the cell that holds its structure—to grow into. This propels the whole cell forward and the process repeats again.
The researchers used gene editing to stop mice producing WNK1, or an inhibitor to prevent WNK1's activity, observing that the T cells in these mice slowed down or stopped moving completely.
Importantly, they found that they could make up for the loss of WNK1 and make the cells speed up by dropping them into a watery solution, which causes the cells to take up water and swell. This shows that the uptake of water, controlled by the WNK1 protein is key for the cells to migrate.
The researchers believe that the mechanism they've discovered could be involved in lots of different cell types beyond immune cells.
Victor Tybulewicz, Group Leader of the Immune Cell Biology Laboratory & Down Syndrome Laboratory at the Crick, said, "Through this research, we've unraveled one of the mysteries of T cell movement, showing that WKN1 causes water and ions to flow into T cells, giving them the space to grow their scaffolding and move forward. Although we looked at T cells, it's likely that this process is happening in many of our cells and even in diseases like cancer, which is important as when cancer cells spread, it is harder to treat."
Leon de Boer, former postdoctoral researcher at the Crick and now at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said, "This process has been speculated about for decades, but advances in technology have finally allowed us to show how WNK1 helps T cells migrate around the body—water comes in almost like a jet engine moving the cell forward."
"I am excited that researchers are starting to investigate WNK1 inhibitors to treat diseases like cancer. In my new project, I'm looking at how properties of membranes help cancer cells to move around the body."
More information:Leonard L. de Boer et al, T cell migration requires ion and water influx to regulate actin polymerization,Nature Communications(2023).DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43423-8
Synplogen, a synthetic biology startup spun out of Kobe University's Graduate School of Science, Technology and Innovation that provides custom DNA synthesis and Gene Therapy Biofoundry™ services, has entered into a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") with Ginkgo Bioworks with the intent to advance global DNA manufacturing and gene therapy platform services within the Japanese market
Synplogen intends to support and introduce Ginkgo's gene therapy services within the Japanese biotechnology and pharmaceutical ecosystem
