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New Immunotherapy Had Positive Results In Cancer Patients After Other Treatments Failed – Forbes

Natural Killer cells have been engineered to attack blood cancers with excellent provisional results ... [+] from a small clinical trial.

A new cell-based immunotherapy for some types of blood cancer has posted promising initial results in a small clinical trial on patients who had exhausted all other treatment options.

The new study, led by researchers from MD Anderson Cancer Center was published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine and used a type of immune cell, called a Natural Killer (NK) cell. The NK cells were engineered to target a protein called CD19 found on B-lymphoblasts and which can become cancerous and cause several types of blood cancer. The study tested the treatment on 11 patients with either chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHL), finding a 73% response rate. Of the 8 people who responded, 7 maintained a complete response over a year after the initial treatment.

All our patients had failed conventional therapies and therefore there was no alternative treatment available for them, said said Katy Rezvani, M.D., Ph.D.,lead author of the paper and professor of Stem Cell Transplantation & Cellular Therapy at MD Anderson. We are encouraged by the results of the clinical trial, which will launch further clinical studies to investigate allogeneic cord blood-derived CAR NK cells as a potential treatment option for patients in need, she added.

Most cell based therapies use a different type of modified immune cell; CAR T-cells. These therapies have shown initial promise in some types of blood cancer, but there have been several setbacks with side-effects in patients and the scaleability and cost of the technology. Importantly, the NK cells used on the patients in the new study were made from donated umbilical cord blood, whereas most CAR T-cell therapies currently rely on a long and expensive process of extracting T-cells from the patient themselves, genetically modifying them and expanding the cells before the therapy is ready for use.

This means the new NK cell therapy can theoretically be produced in bulk and doesn't rely on extracting T-cells from the patient, which can be incredibly difficult, especially if the patient has received a lot of previous therapies which can affect T-cell numbers.

Strictly speaking, the manufacturing and engineering steps for CAR T and CAR NK cells are very similar. The main difference is that unlike commercial CAR T-cells, where one product is used to treat one patient (an autologous product),CAR NK cells are not patient specific, allowing for multiple doses to be manufactured from one donor that can then be used to treat multiple patients, said Rezvani.

CAR T-cell therapies, although posting some wonderful results, particularly in children with hard-to-treat, relapsed leukemias, do come with a lot of side effects, particularly neurotoxicity and cytokine release syndrome, which is life-threatening if not quickly treated. These toxicities were not seen in this initial, small trial, giving the researchers hope that perhaps this therapy may have fewer serious side-effects than other similar approaches.

As well as CAR T-cells, there is also another therapy already available which targets CD19, a drug called blinatumomab (Blincyto). What potential advantages does the new NK cell therapy have over this approach?

These are living cells that persist after infusion and will potentially continue to protect the patient from their cancer over time unlike blinatumomab that needs to be given as a continuous infusion and in multiple cycles, said Revzani. In addition, with the caveat of the small number of patients that we have treated so far and the relatively short follow up time, our approach appears to be less toxic, she added.

MD Anderson have licenced the development of this therapy and other similar B-cell targeting therapies to company Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

Our vision is to improve upon existing treatments by developing armored CAR NKs that could be administered off-the-shelf in an outpatient settingenabling more patients to be treated effectively, quickly and with minimal toxicities, said Rezvani, adding that the team also plans to expand the trial to encompass other CD19-expressing malignancies such as B-cell leukemias.

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New Immunotherapy Had Positive Results In Cancer Patients After Other Treatments Failed - Forbes

Viewpoints: Where’s The Praise About Good News On Declining Opioid Deaths?; Shutting Down Air, Trade Over Coronavirus Will Be More Harmful In Long Run…

Opinion writers weigh in on these health care issues and others.

The Wall Street Journal:Opioid Inflection Point?A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week that drug overdose deaths have declined for the first time in nearly three decades drew little attention until President Trump flogged it in his State of the Union address. Heres hoping the opioid scourge that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives is finally abating. Drug overdose deaths fell 4.1% in 2018 thanks to fewer fatalities from prescription opioids, according to the CDC. Overdoses from natural and semisynthetic opioids such as oxycodone and hydrocodone fell by 13.4%, and 3.2% from heroin, though these declines were partially offset by a 10% increase from synthetic opioids like fentanyl. (2/5)

The Washington Post:In Combating Coronavirus, Slamming The Door To China Will Hurt More Than HelpViruses are tiny parasites. They have a singular mission: to invade a host cell and use its machinery to replicate themselves complete with their own genetic material and then go on to infect other host cells. The new coronavirus, which has a comparatively large genome, is racing through part of China and beginning to spread around the world, transmitted from person to person. The family of coronavirus is so named because of a crownlike appearance of spikes some say it looks like the sun during an eclipse, with a halo. But there is nothing sunny about its emergence as a respiratory disease that can harm and kill human beings. (2/5)

Stat:The Novel Coronavirus Exposes A Flaw In The Nagoya ProtocolThe speed with which the sequence of 2019-nCoV has been shared is a potent reminder of how we should avoid tying up the research community in red tape when we are in a race to find a new vaccine or treatment for a new virus or other pathogen.Coronavirus Coverage: Read the rest of STATs up-to-the-minute reporting on the coronavirus outbreak. But that is precisely what a legally binding international agreement, the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing, has inadvertently ended up doing. This supplementary international agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity could make it extraordinarily difficult to conduct disease surveillance or forge research collaborations around the world. (Thomas B. Cueni, 2/5)

The Washington Post:The Coronavirus Reawakens Old Racist Tropes Against Chinese PeopleAt a middle school a few blocks from my house, a rumor circulated among the children that all Asian kids have the coronavirus and should be quarantined. Misinformation has also reached higher education: In college campuses across the United States, some non-Asian students have acknowledged avoiding Asian classmates for no other reason than, well, the coronavirus came from Asia. The disease apparently emerged in December from a live-food market in Wuhan, China. There have been over 20,000 confirmed cases in China, and the World Health Organization reported 146 confirmed cases in 23 other countries. There are serious concerns of a global pandemic, but the coronavirus has also reawakened centuries-old prejudices against Chinese people. (John Pomfret, 2/5)

The New York Times:How Abortion Warps Our PoliticsWhere will abortion opponents stand in 2020? President Trump recently made his bid for their votes, becoming the first president to speak in person at the annual March for Life in Washington, an event held since 1974. Two days later, a Democratic presidential hopeful, Pete Buttigieg, told a woman who called herself a proud pro-life Democrat that he would not support more moderate abortion language in the Democratic National Committee platform basically suggesting that, on this issue, she will not find affirmation or support from her party. (Gracy Olmstead, 2/5)

Stat:Stem Cell Clinics, Especially Rogue Ones, Need To Be Better RegulatedRogue stem cell clinics continue to victimize hopeful patients seeking cures for cancer, Parkinsons disease, autism, chronic pain, and more. Most of these treatments are unproven and unsupported by evidence, wasting precious time and health care dollars for desperate patients and often doing more harm than good to patients health and survival.Yet public demand for stem cell treatments is outpacing our ability to regulate them. Government agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission should be stepping up to the plate to do this, but it isnt likely that the money will be found soon to do that. (David A. Pearce, 2/6)

Stat:Taxpayer-Funded Research Should Be Open ScienceIn the three years since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, I have rarely supported anything he proposed. And for nearly 50 years as an academic researcher, I have almost always sided with the professional research establishment. Yet on one issue I now find myself siding with the president and opposing the scientific establishment. In December, E&E News reported that the president was considering an executive action requiring that all federally funded research become available to the public immediately upon publication. After all, taxpayers paid for much of this research, which could enhance their health or quality of life, and it should become open science. (Robert M. Kaplan, 2/6)

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Viewpoints: Where's The Praise About Good News On Declining Opioid Deaths?; Shutting Down Air, Trade Over Coronavirus Will Be More Harmful In Long Run...

Abnormal Bone Formation After Trauma Explained and Reversed in Mice – Michigan Medicine

Hip replacements, severe burns, spinal cord injuries, blast injuries, traumatic brain injuriesthese seemingly disparate traumas can each lead to a painful complication during the healing process called heterotopic ossification. Heterotopic ossification is abnormal bone formation within muscle and soft tissues, an unfortunately common phenomenon that typically occurs weeks after an injury or surgery. Patients with heterotopic ossification experience decreased range of motion, swelling and pain.

Currently, theres no way to prevent it and once its formed, theres no way to reverse it, says Benjamin Levi, M.D., Director of the Burn/Wound/Regeneration Medicine Laboratory and Center for Basic and Translational Research in Michigan Medicines Department of Surgery. And while experts suspected that heterotopic ossification was somehow linked to inflammation, new U-M research explains how this happens on a cellular scaleand suggests a way it can be stopped.

To help explain how the healing process goes awry in heterotopic ossification, the research team, led by Levi, Michael Sorkin, M.D. and Amanda Huber, Ph.D., of the Department of Surgerys section of plastic surgery, took a closer look at the inflammation process in mice. Using tissue from injury sites in mouse models of heterotopic ossification, they used single cell RNA sequencing to characterize the types of cells present. They confirmed that macrophages were among the first responders and might be behind aberrant healing.

Macrophages are white blood cells whose normal job is to find and destroy pathogens. Upon closer examination, the Michigan team found that macrophages are more complex than previously thoughtand dont always do what they are supposed to do.

Macrophages are a heterogenous population, some that are helpful with healing and some that are not, explains Levi. People think of macrophages as binary (M1 vs. M2). Yet weve shown that there are many different macrophage phenotypes or states that are present during abnormal wound healing.

Specifically, during heterotopic ossification formation, the increased presence of macrophages that express TGF-beta leads to an errant signal being sent to bone forming stem cells.

For now, the only way to treat heterotopic ossification is to wait for it to stop growing and cut it out which never completely restores joint function. This new research suggests that there may be a way to treat it at the cellular level. Working with the lab led by Stephen Kunkel, Ph.D. of the Department of Pathology, the team demonstrated that an activating peptide to CD47, p7N3 could alter TGF-beta expressing macrophages, reducing their ability to send signals to bone-forming stem cells that lead to heterotopic ossification.

During abnormal wound healing, we think there is some signal that continues to be present at an injury site even after the injury should have resolved, says Levi. Beyond heterotopic ossification, Levi says the studys findings can likely be translated to other types of abnormal wound healing like muscle fibrosis.

The team hopes to eventually develop translational therapies that target this pathway and further characterize not just the inflammatory cells but the stem cells responsible for the abnormal bone formation.

The paper is published in the journal Nature Communications. Other U-M authors include: Charles Hwang, William Carson IV, Rajarsee Menon, John Li, Kaetlin Vasquez, Chase Pagani, Nicole Patel, Shuli Li, Noelle D. Visser, Yashar Niknafs, Shawn Loder, Melissa Scola, Dylan Nycz, Katherine Gallagher, Laurie K. McCauley, Shailesh Agarwal, and Yuji Mishina.

Paper Cited: Regulation of heterotopic ossification by monocytes in a mouse model of aberrant wound healing, Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-14172-4

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Bristol-Myers Squibb Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year Financial Results for 2019 – Yahoo Finance

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) today reports results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2019, which highlight continued strong sales and robust operating performance, along with the ongoing advancement of the companys pipeline.

"By all measures, 2019 was a transformative year for Bristol-Myers Squibb as we progressed our strategy through the acquisition of Celgene, delivered strong operational and financial performance, and continued to drive important science for patients," said Giovanni Caforio, M.D., chairman and chief executive officer, Bristol-Myers Squibb. "With an expanded portfolio of high-performing brands, eight potential commercial launch opportunities, a deep and broad early pipeline, and the financial flexibility to continue to invest in innovation, the company enters 2020 uniquely positioned to transform patients lives through science and create long-term sustainable growth."

Fourth Quarter

$ amounts in millions, except per share amounts

2019*

2018

Change

Total Revenues

$7,945

$5,973

33%

GAAP Diluted EPS

(0.55)

0.71

N/A

Non-GAAP Diluted EPS

1.22

0.94

30%

Full Year

$ amounts in millions, except per share amounts

2019*

2018

Change

Total Revenues

$26,145

$22,561

16%

GAAP Diluted EPS

2.01

3.01

(33)%

Non-GAAP Diluted EPS

4.69

3.98

18%

*Includes Celgene results from November 20, 2019 through December 31, 2019.

FOURTH QUARTER FINANCIAL RESULTS

All comparisons are made versus the same period in 2018 unless otherwise stated.

ACQUISITION OF CELGENE CORPORATION

Otezla is a trademark of Amgen Inc.

FOURTH QUARTER PRODUCT AND PIPELINE UPDATE

Product Revenue Highlights

Global product revenue increases in the fourth quarter of 2019, as compared to the fourth quarter of 2018, drove revenue increases.

* Represents product revenues for Celgene products only from November 20, 2019, which was the date of the closing of the acquisition, through December 31, 2019. See "Worldwide Product Revenue," which is available on bms.com/investors, for information on the revenue for these products and other products of the company and Celgene presented on a quarterly basis for 2018 and 2019.

Oncology

Opdivo

Regulatory

Clinical

Cardiovascular

Eliquis

Clinical

Immunology

Orencia

Regulatory

Clinical

Hematology

Conferences

In December, at the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting, the company announced important new data and analysis from its hematology portfolio:

The following data were also presented at the ASH Annual Meeting by the company and its partners:

Revlimid

Regulatory

Reblozyl

Regulatory

Clinical

ide-cel

Clinical

liso-cel

Regulatory

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

CAPITAL ALLOCATION

Bristol-Myers Squibb maintains a balanced approach to capital allocation focused on future business development and sourcing external innovation as a priority, de-leveraging in the near term to maintain strong investment grade credit ratings and less than 1.5x debt/EBITDA by 2023, planning for annual dividend increases, subject to board approval, and disciplined share repurchases.

In that context, the company today announced its board of directors approved an increase of $5 billion to the share repurchase authorization for the companys common stock. This is incremental to the current share repurchase program announced in October 2016 under which the company has approximately $1 billion remaining and increases the companys total outstanding share repurchase authorization under the companys share repurchase program to approximately $6 billion.

The specific timing and number of shares repurchased will be determined by the companys management at its discretion and will vary based on market conditions, securities law limitations and other factors. The share repurchase program does not obligate the company to repurchase any specific number of shares, does not have a specific expiration date and may be suspended or discontinued at any time. The repurchases may be effected through a combination of one or more open market repurchases, privately negotiated transactions, transactions structured through investment banking institutions and other derivative transactions.

FINANCIAL GUIDANCE

Bristol-Myers Squibb is providing 2020 GAAP EPS guidance range of $0.75 to $0.95 and non-GAAP EPS guidance range of $6.00 to $6.20. In addition, the company is providing for 2021, a non-GAAP EPS guidance range of $7.15 to $7.45. Both GAAP and non-GAAP guidance for 2020 and non-GAAP guidance for 2021 includes the impact of the Celgene acquisition and the Otezla divestiture and assume current exchange rates. Key 2020 GAAP and non-GAAP line-item guidance assumptions are:

GAAP

non-GAAP

Revenue

$40.5B - $42.5B

$40.5B - $42.5B

Gross margin as a percentage of revenue

Approximately 74%

Approximately 80%

Marketing, selling, and administrative expenses

$6.8B - $7.0B

$6.8B - $7.0B

Research and development expenses

$10.1B - $10.3B

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Bristol-Myers Squibb Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year Financial Results for 2019 - Yahoo Finance

Kleo Pharmaceuticals Receives IND Authorization to Proceed from FDA for its Multiple Myeloma Therapeutic – BioSpace

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Feb. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Kleo Pharmaceuticals, an immuno-oncology company developing next-generation, fully synthetic bispecific compounds designed to emulate or enhance the activity of biologics, announced today that it has received Investigational New Drug (IND) authorization to proceed from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to initiate a safety and tolerability clinical study combining KP1237, a CD38-targeting antibody recruiting molecule (ARM), with patients' own Natural Killer (NK) cells to treat multiple myeloma (MM) in post-transplant patients.

The single-arm study will be conducted in 25-30 patients with exploratory endpoints that assess the MRD (minimal residual disease) conversion rate at 90-100 days after transplantation. Recent clinical trials have identified MRD negativity post-transplant as a potential surrogate of long-term remission in MM. The trial is expected to begin enrollment in the first half of 2020, and topline data are expected in the second half of 2021.

"We are excited to have clearance to initiate a clinical trial in the US that addresses a significant unmet medical need in newly diagnosed, post-transplant multiple myeloma patients," said Kleo CEO Doug Manion, MD. "Approximately 30,000 individuals are diagnosed with multiple myeloma in the United States each year, with at least 1/3 of those patients undergoing autologous stem cell transplants."

In this trial, KP1237 is being investigated as a "cell homing" molecule to target the patient's activated NK cells to the CD38-expressing tumor. Current anti-CD38 therapeutic antibodies kill NK cells and are not approved for use in this clinical settingi.

Nonclinical efficacy datapresented at the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting demonstrated that CD38-ARMs are able to kill multiple myeloma cells by antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity without depleting CD38-expressing immune cells. Nonclinical data also demonstrated that the CD38-ARM molecule did not induce complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) suggesting it is not likely to cause CDC in humans. Kleo's 2019 ASH posters can be viewed hereand here.

About Kleo Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Kleo Pharmaceuticals is a unique immuno-oncology company developing next-generation bispecific compounds designed to emulate or enhance the activity of biologics based on the groundbreaking research of its scientific founder Dr. David Spiegel at Yale University. Similar to complex biologic drugs, Kleo's compounds recruit the immune system to destroy cancer cells, with the advantage of being smaller and more versatile, leading to potentially improved safety and efficacy over biologics. They are also much faster and less costly to design and produce, particularly against novel targets. Kleo is advancing several drug candidates based on its proprietary technology platforms, all of which are modular in design and enable rapid generation of novel immunotherapies that can be optimized against certain cancers, or enhance the properties of existing immunotherapies. These include Antibody Recruiting Molecules (ARMs), Synthetic Antibody Mimics (SyAMs) and Monoclonal Antibody Therapy Enhancers (MATEs). Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company (NYSE:BHVN) and PeptiDream Inc. (Nikkei:PPTDF) are investors in Kleo Pharmaceuticals. For more information visit http://kleopharmaceuticals.com.

Forward-Looking StatementsThis news release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties, including statements that are based on the current expectations and assumptions of the Company's management. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this press release regarding the Company's plans and objectives, expectations and assumptions of management are forward-looking statements. The use of certain words, including the words "estimate," "project," "intend," "expect," "believe," "anticipate," "will," "plan," "could," "may" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are made as of this date and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

CONTACT INFORMATIONTiberend Strategic Advisors, Inc.Maureen McEnroe, CFA (Investors)212-375-2664mmcenroe@tiberend.com

Ingrid Mezo (Media)646-604-5150imezo@tiberend.com

i DARZALEX (daratumumab) injection [package insert on the internet]. Horsham, PA: Janssen Biotech, Inc., http://www.janssenlabels.com/package-insert/product-monograph/prescribing-information/DARZALEX-pi.pdf (2019, accessed 05 February 2020).

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Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to Present at the 22nd Annual BIO CEO & Investor Conference – BioSpace

NEW YORK, Feb. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.(NYSE AMERICAN: ATNM)("Actinium") today announced that Sandesh Seth, Actinium's Chairman & CEO, will be presenting at the 22nd Annual BIO CEO & Investor Conference. Hosted by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), the 22nd Annual BIO CEO & Investor Conference will take place February 10th and 11th at the New York Marriott Marquis in New York City.

Presentation Details

Date:Tuesday, February 11Time:10:15 am ETPresenter:Sandesh Seth, Chairman and CEOLocation:New York Marriott Marquis, Ziegfeld Room

Members of Actinium's Executive team will be available for one-on-one meetings with conference attendees. Those interested in scheduling a meeting with Actinium may do so by contacting Steve O'Loughlin, Principal Financial Officer via email at soloughlin@actiniumpharma.com.

About Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE: ATNM)Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing ARCs or Antibody Radiation-Conjugates, which combine the targeting ability of antibodies with the cell killing ability of radiation. Actinium's lead application for our ARCs is targeted conditioning, which is intended to selectively deplete a patient's disease or cancer cells and certain immune cells prior to a BMT or Bone Marrow Transplant, Gene Therapy or Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT) such as CAR-T to enable engraftment of these transplanted cells with minimal toxicities. With our ARC approach, we seek to improve patient outcomes and access to these potentially curative treatments by eliminating or reducing the non-targeted chemotherapy that is used for conditioning in standard practice currently. Our lead product candidate, apamistamab-I-131 (Iomab-B) is being studied in the ongoing pivotal Phase 3Study ofIomab-B inElderlyRelapsed orRefractoryAcute Myeloid Leukemia (SIERRA) trial for BMT conditioning. The SIERRA trial is over fifty percent enrolled and promising single-agent, feasibility and safety data has been highlighted at ASH, TCT, ASCO and SOHO annual meetings. Apatmistamamb-I-131 will also be studied as a targeted conditioning agent in a Phase 1/2 anti-HIV stem cell gene therapy with UC Davis and is expected to be studied with a CAR-T therapy in 2020. In addition, we are developing a multi-disease, multi-target pipeline of clinical-stage ARCs targeting the antigens CD45 and CD33 for targeted conditioning and as a therapeutic either in combination with other therapeutic modalities or as a single agent for patients with a broad range of hematologic malignancies including acute myeloid leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome and multiple myeloma. Ongoing combination trials include our CD33 alpha ARC, Actimab-A, in combination with the salvage chemotherapy CLAG-M and the Bcl-2 targeted therapy venetoclax. Underpinning our clinical programs is our proprietary AWE (Antibody Warhead Enabling) technology platform. This is where our intellectual property portfolio of over 100 patents, know-how, collective research and expertise in the field are being leveraged to construct and study novel ARCs and ARC combinations to bolster our pipeline for strategic purposes. Our AWE technology platform is currently being utilized in a collaborative research partnership with Astellas Pharma, Inc.

More information is available at http://www.actiniumpharma.com, http://www.sierratrial.com and our Twitter feed @ActiniumPharma, http://www.twitter.com/actiniumpharma.

Forward-Looking Statements for Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

This press release may contain projections or other "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe-harbor" provisions of the private securities litigation reform act of 1995 regarding future events or the future financial performance of the Company which the Company undertakes no obligation to update. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated or estimated future results, including the risks and uncertainties associated with preliminary study results varying from final results, estimates of potential markets for drugs under development, clinical trials, actions by the FDA and other governmental agencies, regulatory clearances, responses to regulatory matters, the market demand for and acceptance of Actinium's products and services, performance of clinical research organizations and other risks detailed from time to time in Actinium's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including without limitation its most recent annual report on form 10-K, subsequent quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q and Forms 8-K, each as amended and supplemented from time to time.

Contacts:

Investors:Hans VitzthumLifeSci Advisors, LLCHans@LifeSciAdvisors.com(617) 535-7743

Media:Alisa Steinberg, Director, IR & Corp Commsasteinberg@actiniumpharma.com(646) 237-4087

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Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to Present at the 22nd Annual BIO CEO & Investor Conference - BioSpace

Stopping Smoking Allows Healthy Lung Cells to Proliferate – Medscape

New research results reinforce the benefits of quitting smoking.

Not only does it stop further damage to the lungs, it appears that it also allows new, healthy cells to actively replenish the lining of the airways. This shift in the proportion of healthy cells to damaged cells could reduce the risk for lung cancer, say researchers.

The findings were published online January 29 in Nature.

The team performed whole-genome sequencing on healthy airway cells collected (during a bronchoscopy for clinical indications) from current smokers and ex-smokers, as well as from adult never-smokers and children.

The investigators found, as expected, that the cells from current and ex-smokers had a far higher mutational burden than those of never-smokers and children, including an increased number of "driver" mutations, which increase the potential of cells to become cancerous.

However, they also found that in ex-smokers but not in current smokers up to 40% of the cells were near normal, with far less genetic damage and a low risk of developing cancer.

"People who have smoked heavily for 30, 40 or more years often say to me that it's too late to stop smoking the damage is already done," commented senior author Peter J. Campbell, PhD, Cancer Genome Project, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, United Kingdom.

"What is so exciting about our study is that it shows that it's never too late to quit. Some of the people in our study had smoked more than 15,000 packs of cigarettes over their life, but within a few years of quitting, many of the cells lining their airways showed no evidence of damage from tobacco," he said. The comments appear in a press release issued by Cancer Research UK, which partly funded the study.

This study has "broadened our understanding of the effects of tobacco smoke on normal epithelial cells in the human lung," writes Gerd P. Pfeifer, PhD, at the Center for Epigenetics, Van Andel Institute, Grand Rapids, Michigan, writing in an accompanying comment.

"It has shed light on how the protective effect of smoking cessation plays out at the molecular level in human lung tissue and raises many interesting questions worthy of future investigation," he added.

Joint senior author Sam M. Janes, PhD, Lungs for Living Research Center, UCL Respiratory, University College London, United Kingdom, added that the study has "an important public health message.

"Stopping smoking at any age does not just slow the accumulation of further damage but could reawaken cells unharmed by past lifestyle choices," he said.

"Further research into this process could help to understand how these cells protect against cancer and could potentially lead to new avenues of research into anticancer therapeutics," James added.

In an interview with Medscape Medical News, Campbell said that the team would next like to try "to find where this reservoir of normal cells hides out while the patient is smoking. We have some ideas from mouse models and we think, by adapting the methods we used in this study, we will be able to test that hypothesis directly."

He continued: "If we can find this stem cell niche, then we can study the biology of the cells living in there and what makes them expand when a patient stops smoking.

"Once we understand that biology, we can think about therapies to target that population of cells in beneficial ways."

Campbell concluded that they are "a long way away yet, but the toolkit exists for getting there."

In their article, the team notes that the model explaining how tobacco exposure causes lung cancer centers on the notion that the 60-plus carcinogens in cigarette smoke directly cause mutagenesis, which combines with the indirect effects of inflammation, immune suppression, and infection to lead to cancer.

However, this does not explain why individuals who stop smoking in middle age or earlier "avoid most of the risk of tobacco-associated lung cancer."

They questioned the relationship between tobacco and mutagenesis. For two people who smoke the same number of cigarettes over their lifetime, the observation that the person with longer duration of cessation has a lower risk for lung cancer is difficult to explain if carcinogenesis is induced exclusively by an increase in the mutational burden, they mused.

To investigate further, the team set out to examine the "landscape" of somatic mutations in normal bronchial epithelium. They recruited 16 individuals: three children, four never-smokers, six ex-smokers, and three current smokers.

All the participants underwent bronchoscopy for clinical indications. Samples of airway epithelium were obtained from biopsies or brushings of main or secondary bronchi.

The researchers performed whole-genome sequencing of 632 colonies derived from single bronchial epithelial cells. In addition, cells from squamous cell carcinoma or carcinoma in situ from three of the patients were sequenced.

The results showed there was "considerable heterogeneity" in mutational burden both between patients and in individual patients.

Moreover, single-base substitutions increased significantly with age, at an estimated rate of 22 per cell per year (P = 10-8). In addition, previous and current smoking substantially increased the substitution burden by an estimated 2330 per cell in ex-smokers and 5300 per cell in current smokers.

The team was surprised to find that smoking also increased the variability of the mutational burden from cell to cell, "even within the same individual."

They calculated that, even between cells from a small biopsy sample of normal airway, the standard deviation in mutational burden was 2350 per cell in ex-smokers and 2100 per cell in current smokers, but only 140 per cell in children and 290 per cell in adult never-smokers (P < 10-16 for within-subject heterogeneity).

Between individuals, the mean substitution burden was 1200 per cell in ex-smokers, 1260 per cell in current smokers, and 90 per cell for nonsmokers (P = 10-8 for heterogeneity).

Driver mutations were also more common in individuals who had a history of smoking. In those persons, they were seen in at least 25% of cells, vs 4%14% of cells from adult never-smokers and none of the cells from children.

It was calculated that current smokers had a 2.1-fold increase in the number driver mutations per cell in comparison with never-smokers (P = .04).

In addition, the number of driver mutations per cell increased 1.5-fold with every decade of life (P = .004) and twofold for every 5000 extra somatic mutations per cell (P = .0003).

However, the team also found that some patients among the ex-smokers and current smokers had cells with a near-normal mutational burden, similar to that seen for never-smokers of the equivalent age.

Although these cells were rare in current smokers, their relative frequency was, the team reports, an average fourfold higher in ex-smokers and accounted for between 20% and 40% of all cells studied.

Further analysis showed that these near-normal cells had less damage from tobacco-specific mutational processes than other cells and that they had longer telomeres.

"Two points remain unclear: how these cells have avoided the high rates of mutations that are exhibited by neighbouring cells, and why this particular population of cells expands after smoking cessation," the team writes.

They argue that the presence of longer telomeres suggests they are "recent descendants of quiescent stem cells," which have been found in mice but "remain elusive" in human lungs.

"The apparent expansion of the near-normal cells could represent the expected physiology of a two-compartment model in which relatively short-lived proliferative progenitors are slowly replenished from a pool of quiescent stem cells, but the progenitors are more exposed to tobacco carcinogens," they suggest.

"Only in ex-smokers would the difference in mutagenic environment be sufficient to distinguish newly produced progenitors from long-term occupants of the bronchial epithelial surface," they add.

However, in his commentary, Pfeifer highlights that a "potential caveat" of the study is the small number of individuals (n = 16) from whom cells were taken.

In addition, Pfiefer notes that the "lack of knowledge" about the suggested "long-lived stem cells and information about the longevity of the different cell types in the human lung make it difficult to explain what occurred in the ex-smokers' cells with few mutations."

The study was supported by a Cancer Research UK Grand Challenge Award and the Wellcome Trust. Campbell and Janes are Wellcome Trust senior clinical fellows. The authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Nature. Published online January 29, 2020. Abstract, Comment

For more from Medscape Oncology, follow us on Twitter: @MedscapeOnc.

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Stopping Smoking Allows Healthy Lung Cells to Proliferate - Medscape

In small study, hints of promise for ‘natural killer’ cell therapy – BioPharma Dive

A new type of cancer cell therapy could avoid some of the serious side effects commonly associated with CAR-T treatments, and possibly offer an easier path to developing "off-the-shelf" treatments, suggest findings from a small study led by researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

The results, which were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, are from just 11 patients. Other factors, such as the use of postremission therapy, limit what conclusions can be drawn about the researchers' approach, which relies on "natural killer" cells rather than the T cells used in cellular drugs like Novartis' Kymriah.

Still, the data offer a glimpse into why Japanese drugmaker Takedaagreed last November to license the CAR NK cell therapy from MD Anderson, part of the company's broader push into cell and gene treatments. Some of the data published Wednesday was previously disclosed by the pharma.

The success of cancer immunotherapy, of which CAR-T treatments are a major part, has put T cells at the center of a now decade-long research revival in oncology.

But T cells are only one component of the body's immune system, and scientists in academia and in biotech are exploring whether other cellular defenders could be similarly recruited.

Researchers at MD Anderson have turned to natural killer cells, which by design recognize and attack cancers or other invaders. Such cells have been tested as an anti-cancer treatment before,but using genetic engineering to improve their tumor-killing properties, which the MD Anderson team has done, is a newer innovation.

"To my knowledge, this is the largest body of evidence on the use of CAR NK cells in patients with cancer," said Katayoun Rezvani, the study's corresponding author and a professor of stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy at MD Anderson, in an interview.

Using NK cells derived from cord blood, Rezvani and her colleagues engineered the cells to express a receptor for a protein called CD19, commonly found on the surface of B-cell malignancies like leukemia and lymphoma. They also added a gene for interleukin-15 to boost the expansion and persistence of the infused NK cells, which without engineering would typically disappear after about two weeks.

While the CAR-T treatments Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) and Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) also target CD19, they are made from a patient's own T cells, which are extracted and then engineered outside the body. The personalized process is time-consuming and laborious, hampering the commercial uptake of both Kymriahand Yescarta.

By using cord blood, Rezvani and her team are pursuing an allogeneic, or "off-the-shelf," approach to cell treatment something many consider to be the next step for the field.

Initial data look promising. Seven of the 11 treated patients, who had either chronic lymphocytic leukemia or non-Hodgkin lymphoma, responded to treatment, with the cancers of three going into remission.Most notably, none experienced cytokine release syndrome or neurotoxicity, two severe side effects that commonly occur in patients treated with CAR-T therapy.

"The lack of toxicity is very exciting here," wrote Stephan Grupp, an oncologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a leader in the CAR-T field, in comments emailed to BioPharma Dive. He was not involved with the MD Anderson study.

"We really think that this is something inherent to the biology of the natural killer cells, which means their profile of toxicity is different than that of T cells,"Rezvanisaid.

Study participants did have blood toxicities that researchers associated with the chemotherapy given prior to infusion of the CAR NK cells.

While positive, the results are limited by several factors which make drawing broader conclusions about the ultimate potential of the treatment difficult.

Five of the seven responding patients received postremission treatment, including stem cell transplants, Rituxan (rituximab) and Revlimid (lenalidomide), so researchers did not assess the duration of response to CAR NK therapy.

Additionally, a fresh CAR NK cell product was manufactured for each patient in this study, rather than using the cord blood to produce multiple therapies as would be envisioned for a true off-the-shelf product.

"I think the potential for this approach to be 'off-the-shelf' is also a little speculative at this time," wrote Grupp.

"We would need to see multiple patients treated from the same expanded product with no HLAmatching to know if 'off-the-shelf' is going to be part of the story here," he added, referring to the process by which patients are matched to donor cells.

If cord blood-derived CAR NK cells were able to be given without matching to a patient's HLA genotype, any resulting treatment could be used more widely. Nine patients were partially matched in the MD Anderson study, while the last two were treated without consideration of HLA type.

The MD Anderson researchers plan to continue enrolling patients in the study and are working with Takeda to design a larger, multi-center trial.

The drugmaker is planning to advance the treatment, which it licensed and now calls TAK-007, into pivotal studies in two types of lymphoma and CLL by 2021, with a potential filing for approval in 2023.

"Targeting CD19 was a proof of concept and now that we've demonstrated that this CAR NK approach can work and is safe we want to use this platform to target other types of cancers," said Rezvani, indicating interest in multiple myeloma and acute myeloid leukemia.

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In small study, hints of promise for 'natural killer' cell therapy - BioPharma Dive

Maybe Memorizing the Krebs Cycle Was Worthwhile After All – Medscape

Like most medical students, I struggled to memorize the Krebs cycle, the complex energy-producing process that takes place in the body's mitochondria. Rote learning of Sir Hans Krebs' eponymous cascade of reactions persists and has been cited as a waste of time in modern medical education. However, it looks like that specialized knowledge about mitochondrial structure and function may finally come in handy in the clinic.

Advances in genetics have contributed to improved diagnostic accuracy of a diverse spectrum of mitochondrial disorders. Respiratory chain, nuclear gene, and mitochondrial proteome mutations can lead to multisystem or organ-specific dysfunction.

A new potential treatment for mitochondrial disorders, elamipretide, has received orphan drug designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is in clinical trials sponsored by Stealth Biotherapeutics. [Dr Wilner has consulted for Stealth Biotherapeutics.] Recently I had the opportunity to interview Hilary Vernon, MD, PhD, associate professor of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, and an expert on mitochondrial disorders. Dr Vernon discussed her research on elamipretide as a treatment for Barth syndrome, a rare form of mitochondrial disease.

I am the director of the Mitochondrial Medicine Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital. I work with individuals from infancy through adulthood who have mitochondrial conditions. I became interested in this particular area when I was early in my pediatrics/genetics residency at Johns Hopkins and saw the toll that mitochondrial disorders took on patients' lives and the limited effective therapies. At that point, I decided to focus on patient care and research in this area.

Mitochondrial disorders can be difficult to recognize because of their inherent multisystem nature and variable presentations (even between affected members of the same family). However, there are several considerations that should raise a clinician's suspicion for a mitochondrial condition. Ascertaining a family history of disease inheritance through the maternal line can raise the suspicion for a mitochondrial DNA disorder. Identification of a combination of medical issues in different organ systems that are seemingly unrelated in an individual (ie, optic atrophy and muscle weakness or diabetes and hearing loss) can also raise suspicion for a mitochondrial condition.

Due to the nature of mitochondria as the major energy producers of the cells, high-energy-requiring tissues such as the brain and the muscles are often affected. Perhaps the best known mitochondrial diseases to neurologists are MELAS (mitochondrial encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke) as well as MERFF (myoclonic epilepsy with ragged red fibers). There is a nice body of literature on the effects of arginine and citrulline in modifying stroke-like episodes in MELAS, and this is a therapy that is in current practice.

Mitochondria are complex organelles whose structure and function are encoded in hundreds of genes originating from both the nucleus of the cell and the mitochondria themselves. Mitochondria have many key roles in cellular function, including energy production through the respiratory chain, coordination of apoptosis, nitrogen metabolism, fatty acid oxidation, and much more.

Various cofactors and vitamins can be employed to improve mitochondrial function for different reasons. For example, if a specific enzyme is dysfunctional, supplying the cofactor for that enzyme may improve its function (ie, pyruvate dehydrogenase and thiamine). Antioxidants have also been considered to help reduce the oxidant load that could potentially cause ongoing damage to the mitochondrial membrane resulting from respiratory chain dysfunction (ie, coenzyme Q-10).

It is important to remember that the highest number of individual mitochondrial disorders result from mutations in genes located in the nuclear DNA. For example, the TAZ gene that is abnormal in Barth syndrome is a nuclear gene located on the X chromosome. These genes are amenable to the "regular" approaches to gene therapy.

Targeting mitochondrial DNA for gene therapy requires a different set of approaches because the gene delivery has to overcome the barrier of the mitochondrial membranes. However, research is ongoing to overcome these obstacles.

Barth syndrome is a very rare genetic X-linked disorder that usually only affects males. The genetic defect leads to an abnormal composition of cardiolipin on the inner mitochondrial membrane. Cardiolipin is an important phospholipid involved in many mitochondrial functions, including organization of inner mitochondrial membrane cristae, involvement in apoptosis, and organization of the respiratory chain (which is responsible for producing ATP via the process of oxidative phosphorylation), and many of these functions are abnormal in Barth syndrome. Individuals with Barth syndrome typically have early-onset cardiomyopathy, myopathy, intermittent neutropenia, fatigue, poor early growth, among other health concerns.

Early in my post-residency career, I followed several patients with Barth syndrome and was quickly welcomed into the Barth syndrome community by the families and the Barth Syndrome Foundation. From there, I founded the only interdisciplinary Barth syndrome clinic in the US and began to focus a significant amount of my clinical and laboratory research on this condition.

Most commonly, these individuals come to medical attention because of cardiomyopathy, but a minority of patients do come to attention due to repeated infections and neutropenia. Patients were identified for study participation through the Barth Syndrome Foundation or because they were already patients of my study team.

All participants were known to have Barth syndrome prior to study entry, and all had confirmatory genetic testing showing a pathogenic mutation in the TAZ gene.

By binding to cardiolipin in the inner mitochondrial membrane, elamipretide is believed to stabilize cristae architecture and electron transport chain structure during oxidative stress. I thought it would be great if this could help to stabilize the abnormal cardiolipin components on the inner mitochondrial membrane in Barth syndrome.

We observed improvements in several areas across the study population in the open-label extension part of the study. This includes a significant improvement in exercise performance (as measured by the 6-minute walk test, with an average improvement of 95.9 meters at 36 weeks) and a significant improvement in muscle strength. We also observed a potential improvement in cardiac stroke volume. Most of the adverse events were local injection-site reactions and were mild to moderate in nature.

The TAZPOWER trial has an ongoing open-label extension with the same endpoints as the placebo-controlled portion evaluated on an ongoing basis. In addition, in my laboratory, we are using induced pluripotent stem cells to learn more about how cardiolipin abnormalities affect different cell types in an effort to understand the tissue specificity of disease. This will help us to understand whether different aspects of Barth syndrome would necessitate individual management or clinical monitoring strategies.

Mitochondrial inner membrane dysfunction is increasingly recognized as a major aspect of the pathology of a wide range of mitochondrial conditions. Therefore, based on the role of stabilizing mitochondrial membrane components, elamipretide has a potential role in many disorders of the mitochondria.

Yes, this is what we would call "secondary mitochondrial dysfunction" (meant to differentiate from "primary mitochondrial disease," which is caused by defects in genes that encode for mitochondrial structure and function). Approaches intended to protect the mitochondria from further damage, such as antioxidants or strategies that can bypass the mitochondria for ATP production, could overlap as treatment for primary mitochondrial disease and secondary mitochondrial dysfunction.

This is something that is much discussed as a newer consideration for families who are affected by disorders of the mitochondrial DNA, but not something I have experience with firsthand.

Yes. The United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation and the Mitochondrial Medicine Society collaborated to develop the Mito Care Network, with 19 sites identified as Mitochondrial Medicine Centers across the US.

Andrew Wilner is an associate professor of neurology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, a health journalist, and an avid SCUBA diver. His latest book is The Locum Life: A Physician's Guide to Locum Tenens.

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Maybe Memorizing the Krebs Cycle Was Worthwhile After All - Medscape

Global Personalized Medicine Market Analysis (2016 to 2026) – Total Market Value is Expected to Reach $3.92 Trillion by 2026 – ResearchAndMarkets.com…

The "Global Personalized Medicine Market Analysis 2019" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Personalized Medicine market is expected to reach $3.92 trillion by 2026 growing at a CAGR of 12.1% during the forecast period.

The efficient and advanced technology and Higher prevalence of disease are driving the market growth. However, the higher cost of research and developments is hampering the market.

Key Questions Answered in this Report:

Based on the End User, the hospital's segment is estimated to have a lucrative growth due to the lower cost personalized medicines availability in the hospitals.

As the practice of personalized medicine becomes more widespread, hospitals will also experience the need to adapt. That does not mean every hospital and medical centre should try and drive the science, but they should be open to collaborations to facilitate such work.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Market Synopsis

2 Research Outline

2.1 Research Snapshot

2.2 Research Methodology

2.3 Research Sources

2.3.1 Primary Research Sources

2.3.2 Secondary Research Sources

3 Market Dynamics

3.1 Drivers

3.2 Restraints

4 Market Environment

4.1 Bargaining power of suppliers

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

4.3 Threat of substitutes

4.4 Threat of new entrants

4.5 Competitive rivalry

5 Global Personalized Medicine Market, By Product

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Diagnostics

5.3 Personalized Medical Care

5.4 Personalized Nutrition & Wellness

5.5 Therapeutics

6 Global Personalized Medicine Market, By Technology

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Metabolomics

6.3 Pharmacodynamics

6.4 Pharmacogenetics

6.5 Pharmacogenomics

6.6 Pharmacokinetics

6.7 Pharmacoproteomics

6.8 Point-of-Care Testing

6.9 Stem Cell Therapy

7 Global Personalized Medicine Market, By Therapeutic Area

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Autoimmune Diseases

7.3 Blood Transfusion Safety

7.4 Cancer Management

7.5 Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD)

7.6 Central Nervous System (CNS) Disorders

7.7 Coagulation Therapy

7.8 Diabetes

7.9 Infectious Diseases

7.10 Antiviral

7.11 Neurology

7.12 Psychiatry

7.13 Oncology

7.14 Immunology

7.15 Respiratory

8 Global Personalized Medicine Market, By Distribution Channel

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Dietary Care Centers

8.3 Hospital's Pharmacies

8.4 Retail Pharmacies

8.5 Other Distribution Channels

9 Global Personalized Medicine Market, By Application

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Biomarker Identification

9.3 Clinical Research Applications

9.4 Companion Diagnostics

9.5 Health Informatics

10 Global Personalized Medicine Market, By End-User

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Academic Institutes

10.3 Bio and Health Informatics Companies

10.4 Clinical Care and Research Laboratories

10.5 Contract Research Organizations

10.6 Hospitals

10.7 Molecular Diagnostic Laboratories and Testing Facilities

10.8 Research Laboratories

10.9 Service Providers

10.10 Partner

10.11 Venture Capitalists

10.12 Other End Users

11 Global Personalized Medicine Market, By Geography

11.1 North America

11.2 Europe

11.3 Asia Pacific

11.4 South America

11.5 Middle East & Africa

12 Strategic Benchmarking

13 Vendors Landscape

13.1 Abbott Laboratories

13.2 Affymetrix Incorporated

13.3 Agendia N.V

13.4 Agilent Technologies, Inc

13.5 Amgen, Inc

13.6 Asuragen Incorporated

13.7 Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Llc

13.8 Celera Diagnostics LLC

13.9 Celgene Corporation

13.10 Roche Diagnostics Corporation

13.11 Precision Biologics Incorporated

13.12 Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Inc

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Global Personalized Medicine Market Analysis (2016 to 2026) - Total Market Value is Expected to Reach $3.92 Trillion by 2026 - ResearchAndMarkets.com...