Democratic senators question UnitedHealth's loan recovery tactics post-cyberattack.
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Apollomics announces termination of US staff and plans shareholder vote on winding up
Apollomics Inc. (NASDAQ:APLM), a biotechnology company with a market capitalization of $6.26 million and a year-to-date stock decline of 36.1%, announced Thursday that it has terminated all of its U.S. employees, including Chief Executive Officer Dr. Guo-Liang Yu and Chief Financial Officer Dr. Matthew Plunkett, citing its current cash position. The terminations are effective Friday.
The company also stated that it expects to discontinue all activities related to its SPARTA clinical trial as soon as possible.
In addition, Apollomics said it will hold an Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders on September 4, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time to seek shareholder approval for the winding up of the company.
The information is based on a statement released in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
'ACC Recommends Vaccination Against Respiratory Illness in Cardiovascular Disease'
Adults with heart disease should get vaccinated against a range of respiratory viruses, according to new clinical guidance from the American College of Cardiology.
The recommendation, published this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, recommends people with cardiovascular disease receive vaccines against influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), as this population is at greater risk for respiratory infections and subsequent adverse events, including hospitalization and death. The guidance also recommends other vaccines, such as those against shingles and pneumococcal disease, where vaccination appears to offer cardiovascular protection.
For a person with cardiovascular disease, a respiratory illness can put strain on the heart, according to Srihari S. Naidu, MD, a professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York, who was not a part of the guidelines committee.
“In an older person, the heart has to work harder and beat faster,” Naidu said, adding that this can be detrimental to someone with heart problems. “This can cause shortness of breath or chest pain and may lead to hospitalization or death.”
A vaccination will not always prevent a respiratory infection but it will make it less severe, he added.
The European Society of Cardiology has also recognized the importance of vaccination against respiratory disease as part of cardiovascular risk management. A consensus statement released earlier this year by the group called for vaccinations to be “considered the fourth pillar” of medical prevention of cardiovascular disease, alongside antihypertensives, lipid-lowering agents and drugs that treat diabetes.
The authors of the statement noted that data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study showed that each 5% increase in monthly influenza activity was linked with a 24% increase in hospitalization rates for heart failure. SARS-CoV-2 was also associated with a significant rise in the risk for cardiovascular disease, particularly early in the COVID-19 pandemic when population immunity was extremely low, according to the National Institutes of Health. Other respiratory infections, including RSV, parainfluenza, adenovirus, and pneumococcal pneumonia, have also been tied to increased morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular conditions.
Vaccine Uptake Suboptimal in the US
In the US, overall rates of vaccination remain suboptimal, according to data from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases Immunization Survey. The cumulative proportion of adults vaccinated in 2024 was < 50% for the influenza vaccine and < 25% for both the COVID-19 and RSV vaccines.
The FDA recently approved updated formulations of the three currently available COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax, albeit with narrower indications. On August 27, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, secretary of Health and Human Services, announced on the social media platform X that the emergency use authorizations for the vaccines have been removed, but they have been approved for people with conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, that increase their risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.
The new guidelines acknowledge several barriers to vaccination and outline strategies to overcome issues related to access, address vaccine hesitancy, and improve vaccination rates. Cardiology visits provide an ideal opportunity for clinicians to educate patients, the authors stated.
One key barrier to getting vaccinated is the lack of patient knowledge about the link between heart disease and avoiding vaccinations, said Paul Heidenreich, MD, professor and vice chair for quality in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University in Stanford, California, and lead author of the clinical guidance.
“Many patients do not realize that their heart condition puts them at risk for more severe lung and heart disease should they become infected,” Heidenreich said. “Heart disease is often due in part to inflammation that may be systemic and this inflammation may worsen lung function.”
According to the American Heart Association, research on the impact of respiratory illnesses and heart disease shows:
- About 20% of adults hospitalized with RSV experienced heart attacks and heart failure.
- COVID-19 is associated with a greater risk for heart failure, irregular heartbeat, and coronary disease.
- The risk for a heart attack may be up to six times higher in the week following an influenza diagnosis.
Another barrier to vaccination is that many specialty care clinics are not structured to provide vaccinations, Heidenreich added.
“Providing a vaccine may be seen [as something] that is outside of the normal duties of staff,” he said. “If copays are imposed, some patients will no longer agree to vaccination. Fortunately, health plans are still required to provide certain vaccines free of charge.”
Heidenreich and Naidu reported no relevant financial conflicts of interest.
How a Robot Performed Surgery Without Human Assistance
The machines continue to rise.
Researchers used artificial intelligence (AI) to train a robotic program to do parts of a gallbladder removal surgery, or a cholecystectomy. The robotic surgeon successfully performed its surgical tasks on eight pig cadavers, according to a new study published in Science Robotics.
Gallbladder surgery was the first to be performed fully laparoscopically — meaning using a thin, flexible tube with a camera and a light at the end along with other small instruments inserted through several small cuts — back in 1985. More than 700,000 of these procedures are performed each year in the US.
“So to be able to automate such surgery that everybody knows, I thought could be surprising,” said lead author Ji Woong “Brian” Kim, PhD, a former postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, who’s now at Stanford University, Stanford, California.
How They Did It
The approach, called Surgical Robot Transformer-Hierarchy (SRT-H), uses a “hierarchical framework” program, which breaks down the surgical procedure into manageable parts. It’s kind of like a human surgeon delegating tasks: A computerized chief surgeon gives high-level instructions, and a robotic resident translates these instructions into precise, low-level movements.
Daniel Herron, MD, chief of Bariatric Surgery for the Mount Sinai Health System, explained the technology simply: “Like ChatGPT that’s been revised to work with images and robotic arms.” (Herron was not involved in the study).
The SRT-H program was trained on videos of real gallbladder surgeries. When it’s doing surgery itself, it uses stereoscopic images collected from the robot on both the laparoscope and the wrist of the instruments.
The robot had to complete 17 tasks in order to identify the cystic duct and artery, place clips on each, and then cut them. Initially, the robot also needed to incorporate voice commands like “move right arm to the right” from those supervising, but it learned from these commands and was eventually able to do the tasks without voice intervention.
“It was very flexible and also very reliable,” Kim said of SRT-H. “Our work shows that AI models can be made reliable enough for surgical autonomy — something that once felt far-off but is now demonstrably viable.”
Impressive Tech, but Still Early
“It’s a first step, it’s an early step, but it’s a whole heck of a lot different from performing a full cholecystectomy,” noted Herron. “What we surgeons like to say is that the easiest case I ever did was a gallbladder, and the hardest case I ever did was a gallbladder, and therein lies the problem.”
This was done in an ex vivo model, said Herron, which means most of the surgical challenges of an actual procedure weren’t present. “There’s no bleeding, there’s no heartbeat that’s making everything oscillate, there’s no breathing, there’s no diaphragm pushing the gallbladder back and forth.” In a real scenario, the robot may have to successfully contend with blood obscuring the surgical field or smoke from cautery devices that interferes with your vision.
Further testing will involve more complex challenges, but for now Kim noted that each pig had slight differences and the robot was able to respond to “the variety of organs, the morphologies, the shapes, the environments.”
Building on Rapidly-Advancing Tech
Computerized surgeries already exist, of course, such as CyberKnife, which uses a robotic arm to precisely deliver targeted doses of radiation to destroy tumors in the brain, spine, and other parts of the body. LASIK, or Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis, uses a computer-controlled laser to reshape the cornea to correct vision problems like nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism.
For surgeons, there’s also a DaVinci robot system that allows a surgeon to perform complex procedures with enhanced precision and control through tiny incisions. But in that case, the human surgeon is operating the robotic arms from a console.
And while people might be reluctant to have an AI-driven robot perform surgery, Kim said in emergency scenarios when there’s no surgeon available, a highly trained and tested robot could be better than no care.
Using this kind of technology for emergencies, once it can really do it, makes sense to Herron. He likened it to an airplane’s ability to fly autonomously. “Are you willing to let a fancy robot land the plane in an emergency? That’s a different question than saying, ‘hey, are you willing to get into an airplane that has no pilot aboard and let the computer fly it completely autonomously?’”
Given how fast AI is moving, it’s possible to see this technology progress significantly in the next few years, however there’s more work to do before robots can perform a whole surgery on their own. “We’re trying to make the model much bigger with much larger training data,” said Kim. “That’s kind of the key to unlocking very good intelligence in the model.”
Outlook blindsided as FDA blocks wet AMD drug once again
Shares in Outlook Therapeutics lost more than half their value after the FDA turned down the company's marketing application for its new formulation of bevacizumab gamma as a treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
The US regulator sent the New Jersey company a complete response letter (CRL) for the VEGF inhibitor, which has the trade name Lytenava and is already approved and on sale in other markets, including Germany and the UK.
The reason for the CRL was "a lack of substantial evidence of effectiveness," according to Outlook, which said it would work with the agency to try to address the issues raised. It is the second FDA rejection for the drug, which was also turned down in 2023, while Outlook also withdrew an earlier filing in 2022.
The decision stems from the failure of one of Outlook's phase 3 clinical trials, NORSE EIGHT, to meet its primary efficacy endpoint, namely non-inferiority with another ranibizumab formulation on best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) at eight weeks, although it did match the comparator on that outcome at the 12-week timepoint.
While another study called NORSE TWO did show efficacy, the FDA typically requires two positive pivotal trials to support approval. Despite that, Outlook opted to press on with a regulatory filing, hoping that the totality of data across the two studies would be enough to support approval.
Compounded bevacizumab formulations are sometimes used to treat wet AMD, but because the reference product (Roche's Avastin/MabThera) is only indicated for cancer conditions, they can only be used off-label for ophthalmic conditions like wet AMD.
Lytenava is being held up by Outlook as a standardised formulation of bevacizumab that can sidestep some of the issues with compounded or repackaged bevacizumab products, which – according to some studies – have variations in drug concentration that could affect their efficacy.
Despite that, off-label repackaged bevacizumab is one of the most frequently used first-line anti-VEGF treatments in Europe, with approximately 2.8 million injections for retinal diseases annually, with another 2.7 million injections a year in the US.
"While we are very disappointed with this outcome, we intend to meet with the FDA to receive additional clarity on their requirements to potentially approve the first on-label bevacizumab product specifically formulated, manufactured, and packaged for intravitreal use in the US," said Bob Jahr, Outlook's chief executive.
"We remain committed to providing patients with a safe and effective alternative to compounded Avastin manufactured in the US," he added.
Outlook has a strategic collaboration with Cencora to support the commercial launch of Lytenava, but has not yet reported any sales figures for the product.
Shares in Outlook on the Nasdaq were trading down 54% at the time of writing today.
https://pharmaphorum.com/news/outlook-blindsided-fda-blocks-wet-amd-drug-once-again
Another Narrative Busted: Bolton Investigation Began Under Biden
by Sundance via The Last Refuge,
For several days the media has been saying the Trump administration FBI targeted John Bolton, hence the FBI raid on his home and office. However, the New York Times now outlines how the investigation into John Bolton began during the Biden administration and picked up speed after they received access to his email information from an “adversarial country’s spy service.”
Apparently, John Bolton used an unclassified email system to send information to his friends and allies. The emails were intercepted. Bolton was discussing information that appears to have been the outcome of his access to classified information as National Security Advisor.
CTH has previously outlined how John Bolton’s business model was essentially selling information and influence. This common DC business model seems to have formed the baseline for him to share sensitive, possibly classified information, of greater value. This does not come as a surprise.
Selling information is the currency of affluence in Washington DC. That’s why the removal of security clearances is looked upon as devastating within the beltway. New York Times story below:
NEW YORK TIMES – The investigation into President Trump’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, began to pick up momentum during the Biden administration, when U.S. intelligence officials collected information that appeared to show that he had mishandled classified information, according to people familiar with the inquiry.
The United States gathered data from an adversarial country’s spy service, including emails with sensitive information that Mr. Bolton, while still working in the first Trump administration, appeared to have sent to people close to him on an unclassified system, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive case that remains open.
The emails in question, according to the people, were sent by Mr. Bolton and included information that appeared to derive from classified documents he had seen while he was national security adviser. Mr. Bolton apparently sent the messages to people close to him who were helping him gather material that he would ultimately use in his 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.”
In a sign of the stakes for Mr. Bolton, he is in talks to retain the high-profile criminal defense lawyer Abbe Lowell. Mr. Lowell, who has represented Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, is defending two other prominent perceived enemies of Mr. Trump who are now under scrutiny: the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, and Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board. (read more)
At the time of the raid, we noted the activity of Bolton mirrors that of former Senator John McCain (now dead). “An FBI investigation under the auspices of potential violations of the Espionage Act, where Bolton would have leveraged current or prior classified intelligence information as part of his influence business.
Almost identically to former Senator John McCain, John Bolton was well known to intersect with the nation of Qatar as part of his operation. Qatar has deep pockets and a long-identified influence operation throughout the Middle East, sometimes playing both sides. Qatar is also the playground for the CIA.
While it is yet unknown which nation and which activity Bolton was likely engaged in, the highest probability centers around the deepest pockets, which would also put Bolton on the CIA radar.
Since initially writing that outline, someone noticed this video from John McCain’s funeral. WATCH CLOSELY:
Something is being given to John Bolton in that video. Something from Mouaz Moustafa, Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) and Senator John McCain’s intermediary to the Muslim Brotherhood. {Go Deep}
If I had to guess, from the position of Moustafa and those behind him (Muslim Brotherhood/Qatar), John Bolton became the replacement for John McCain after the senator’s death. We wait to find out the details of the predicate for the FBI raid.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/another-narrative-busted-bolton-investigation-began-under-biden
The Chart Baltimore Democrats Hope You Never See
Leftist Maryland Governor Wes Moore's refusal to accept National Guard assistance from the federal government has left many Baltimore residents baffled, given the city's multi-decade violent crime crisis under failed Democratic Party leadership.
While Moore recently took a victory lap touting a supposedly "record low" homicide rate, everyone who lives in the metro area knows the truth: large swaths of the city remain 'no-go zones', controlled by vicious drug gangs. Years of "defund the police" policies pushed by social justice warriors in City Hall have hollowed out the police to the core.
Remember the riots?
Now, residents are taking note of the president's efforts to clean up the violent crime mess in Washington, D.C. In just over two weeks, violent crime has subsided. Many are left wondering why Democratic leadership in Baltimore never had the same seriousness to clean up their city; instead, Democrats chose to defund the police and allow the metro area to descend into what Trump calls a "hellhole."
Shocking reversal in DC crime data...
"In the 17 days since the Guard was deployed in Washington, D.C., Baltimore has recorded more than 2,500 crimes—including six homicides, nine rapes, over 400 assaults, 252 auto thefts, 155 burglaries, and nearly 440 acts of vandalism," local media Fox Baltimore wrote earlier this week, adding, "This crime rate is nine times higher than D.C.'s during the same period."
There was a time when folks in the Baltimore area would go to restaurants and bars across Inner Harbor, Harbor East, Fells Point, Canton, and even Federal Hill. But many have since fled the crime-ridden metro area for surrounding counties, as conditions became so terrible that raising a family there was no longer a suitable option. Now, folks mostly avoid the city because Democratic leadership has failed residents with a population crash to 100-year lows.
Here's more from the local news outlet:
Residents and business owners have expressed concern over the escalating violence. "Just brutally attacking somebody is off the case crazy," one victim said. Betsy Smith of the National Police Association commented, "I'd think residents would welcome help for their very short-staffed police department."
The discrepancy between the governor's statements and the reality on the ground has left many questioning whether crime in Baltimore is truly under control. "We need to stop acting tough and start getting tough in Baltimore City," a local resident said.
Smith added, "If the people in Baltimore City want to truly be free they need to embrace not only their local law enforcement but state and federal partners as well." As the city grapples with its crime wave, the call for additional support continues to grow.
The most damning chart Democrats don't want folks to see is the latest exodus from Baltimore City, starting around 2015, mainly driven by failed progressives that unleashed a manufactured crime tsunami of their own doing, making any gang scene from HBO's The Wire look like child's play.
Trump is giving parts of the country a taste of law and order, something that might prove contagious, given how the Democratic Party has subjected millions nationwide (btw, nobody voted for violent crime) to more than a decade of backfiring social-justice policies that transformed quiet communities into violent crime zones.
Oh, btw, the way, after Trump called out Moore.
Sigh...
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/chart-baltimore-democrats-hope-you-never-see
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