Category: Uncategorized

Also Largely Immaterial To Merck, The Good News On Cervical Cancers Continues, For Merck’s Keytruda®: At ESMO

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To be certain, this is very good news — and acts as the follow-up, to mine of yesterday morning.

The juggernaut continues — and it was already doing well in prescribing trends for cervical cancer (oncologists had previously been using it off-label in this and other cancers, for at least five years). So this won’t vastly increase the $25 billion a year franchise’s take, but it will more deeply cement it, as the foundation of the gold standard therapy. Here’s the latest:

…Along with breast cancer, cervical cancer is among the most feared cancer diagnoses for women around the world.

Today, Merck, with multiple facilities in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, announced the first presentation of overall survival results from a pivotal Phase 3 trial, investigating Keytruda® (pembrolizumab), Merck’s anti-Programmed Cell Death Protein therapy, in combination with concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CRT) for newly diagnosed patients with high-risk locally advanced cervical cancer.

The study results of 1,020 patients showed the therapy reduced the risk of death by 33% versus concurrent CRT alone for these patients. The safety profile of Keytruda in this trial was consistent with that observed in previously reported studies; no new safety signals were identified….

Now you know — onward with a smile — as a glorious Fall mountain/lake vacation draws nigh….

नमस्ते

Japan And The European Union Jointly Highlight The Fourth Flyby of Mercury, By Automated Spacecraft BepiColombo…

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Watch the closest flyby of Mercury, by any spacecraft ever, as the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft sped past Mercury during its latest encounter on September 4, 2024. This BepiColombo fourth flyby gave us our first clear view of Mercury’s south pole.

Do watch the excellent YouTube, offering multiple angles — all in high-res black and white (see below):

Here is some of ESA’s copy on it all:

…This timelapse is made up of 128 different images captured by all three of BepiColombo’s monitoring cameras, M-CAM 1, 2 and 3. We see the planet move in and out of the fields of view of M-CAM 2 and 3, before M-CAM 1 sees the planet receding into the distance at the end of the video.

The first few images are taken in the days and weeks before the flyby. Mercury first appears in an image taken at 23:50 CEST (21:50 UTC) on 4 September, at a distance of 191 km. Closest approach was at 23:48 CEST at a distance of 165 km.

The sequence ends around 24 hours later, on 5 September 2024, when BepiColombo was about 243 000 km from Mercury.

During the flyby it was possible to identify various geological features that BepiColombo will study in more detail once in orbit around the planet. Four minutes after closest approach, a large ‘peak ring basin’ called Vivaldi came into view.

This crater was named after the famous Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741). The flyover of Vivaldi crater was the inspiration for using Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ as the soundtrack for this timelapse.

Peak ring basins are mysterious craters created by powerful asteroid or comet impacts, so-called because of the inner ring of peaks on an otherwise flattish floor.

A couple of minutes later, another peak ring basin came into view: newly named Stoddart. The name was recently assigned following a request from the M-CAM team, who realised that this crater would be visible in these images and decided it would be worth naming considering its potential interest for scientists in the future.

BepiColombo’s three monitoring cameras provided 1024 x 1024 pixel snapshots. Their main purpose is to monitor the spacecraft’s various booms and antennas, hence why we see parts of the spacecraft in the foreground. The photos that they capture of Mercury during the flybys are a bonus.

The 4 September gravity assist flyby was the fourth at Mercury and the seventh of nine planetary flybys overall. During its eight-year cruise to the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System, BepiColombo makes one flyby at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury, to help steer itself on course for entering orbit around Mercury in 2026.

BepiColombo is an international collaboration between ESA and JAXA….

These dips, by graceful twirling / dancing speed-merchants… will forever fire my imagination. This is a glimpse at what it must be like, to be immortal, and unbound by needs of oxygen, and a corporeal body… just pure energy — pure… light. Whoosh! Onward… grinning.

नमस्ते

Hey Hinderaker: Read The US Constitution.

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Nah.

Don’t bother — there are too many big words in there for you.

Here’s the crux of it… Haitian Americans are allowed to live anywhere they would like. Recent immigrants occasionally do tend to organize into close communities, both for self protection — and richness of culture.

Hinderaker wrote — as a pure xenophobe tonight:

”…And, anyway, what the Hell are 20,000 Haitian immigrants doing in an Ohio town of 40,000?…”

See John just like you they’re allowed to live anywhere. You should try reading up — or taking more… ketamine. Both would benefit you, immensely.

So why don’t you just shove it?

[U X2: He Was A 2016 Trumper!] Ketchup, Take 2?!: Hinderaker Pegs The Guy With An AK-47 And Scope As A “Right Winger”…

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Updated: as with all such characters, he seems mentally ill… he said he was a Trumper, but became disillusioned in 2019.

Second Update, 09.16.24 Evening: Hinderaker all but admits that Tangerine’s own rhetoric… false at that — may have painted an “enduring” target on his own chest.

John further *almost* admits that this uncanny ability of hundreds of profoundly mentally ill Americans to get their hands on AK-47s (fully automatic, very accurate, rifles of war) — with sniper scopes attached, most with the serial numbers filed off… all but guarantees that someone, someday relatively soon… will be successful.

He almost concedes that “things have to change”. Of course, he doesn’t say what it would be that needs to change (precisely), whether it is a toning down of Trump‘s rhetoric, or sensible gun legislation, or both… but it seems to be “some progress” — that old Pop-Pop Hinderaker no longer wants to live in a world where people are reasonably likely to get assassinated, on the regular. End of second update.

So… now, let’s just leave it at this:

The main story should be how did he end up in a sniper’s nest with a scoped AK-47, ready to take a shot from ~400 yards out?

He shouldn’t have been allowed to own an automatic weapon — of any kind, based on his social media rants, from Hawaii. Moreover, barricading himself inside a store — and his use of firearms in a hostage like situation, in 2003 in North Carolina, along with 100 other priors now reported… should have prevented his EVER getting an assault rifle.

End first update.

I’ve seen nothing elsewhere about the leanings of the alleged shooter, but it was a fairly credible… threat at a minimum.

Of course violence is never the answer. He is in custody, so by tomorrow midday, we should know much more…

That said, it is fascinating that John’s people are telling him the terror threat came from “the right”.

Not sure how they’d know that — unless inside law enforcement is leaking his name in Florida.

But it is certainly true that the ease of getting a scope mounted assault rifle ought to be part of this story — at Tangerine’s club.

Right or left — assassination is never the answer.

Out.

What A Load Of… Crap, This Morning, From Paul Mirengoff.

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Again, he and his boys apparently cannot accept what the Supremes have actually ruled… is the law on EEO matters.

So he makes claims that the decisions do not support, to argue that directors and officers of public companies may be personally liable, if their so-called “DEI” efforts are beyond what the Supremes will countenance.

Poppycock.

Every COMPETENT corporate lawyer for ’34 Act companies can read the decisions for themselves, and can offer reasoned opinions that it is more likely than not… that hiring and promotion decisions are (always were, and will always be)… made based on a myriad of factors — including the under-represented viewpoints, in ’34 Act company board-rooms across America — to reach the companies’ customers.

So again — Paul tries to tell corporate board members that there is “a monster under their beds…” — a monster called “personal liability“. Hilarious.

Indeed, so long as reputable firms offer them legal advice that their course of conduct is more likely than not… lawful (and it is!)… Paul’s monster is… a figment of his (apparently considerable) imagination.

Onward, grinning.

Let Me Get This Straight… Old Coot Johnson… Doesn’t Cotton To Kamala’s Style / Vibes, In Interviews?!

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Firmly in the land of “Crazy Sh!t Old Pop-Pop Complains About“…

Scott Johnson tells us that Kamala seems too “curated” — in her one on one interviews.

I suppose that’s because his ears have been bleeding for nine long years (ten, actually) listening to Tangerine burp up insane conspiracy theories, racist lies, and self-deluded BS about how he won the last election and isn’t actually… a convicted felon.

In short, Scott’s utterly forgotten what reasoned political discourse sounds like.

Time to take your Ketamine, old man — go take a nap.

Cheers.

Power Alley: Merck Scored A Pair Of New Wins For Keytruda®, In Hard To Treat Breast Cancers…

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So… this is very good news, after Merck saw some trial results, at competitors that might narrow its lead in other cancers, in about three years (results posted about ten days ago, now on that one). But as I say, that is at least three years off — and thus, this falls into the “overall immaterial” category. These puts and takes mostly cancel each other out, as the win in triple negative breast cancer is… for a fairly rare condition — only about 13 women out of each 100,000 in the US will get it.

Still net good news — as those women will now see longer lives, from combo therapies that beat Tecentriq®. As ever, Fierce Pharma has done an excellent job capturing all the nuance (so I don’t have to!) — do go read it all:

…In the current analysis, Keytruda’s EFS benefit remained strong, with the drug showing a 35% improvement over neoadjuvant chemo alone. The five-year EFS rate was 81.2% for Keytruda and 72.2% for control.

“We had thought that breast cancer may not be sensitive to immunotherapy alone but giving it in combination with chemotherapy before surgery and then further afterwards improves overall survival in many patients,” Alessandra Curioni-Fontecedro, M.D., director of oncology at the Hospital of Fribourg in Switzerland, said in an ESMO-facilitated statement. “The finding suggests the possibility that the combination of treatments might lead to a sensitization of TNBC to immunotherapy.”

Keytruda’s KEYNOTE-522 win sets it apart from Roche’s PD-L1 inhibitor Tecentriq. Last year, following an interim analysis, Roche discontinued the phase 3 IMpassion030 trial, which was testing Tecentriq in combination with chemo as a postsurgical adjuvant therapy in TNBC. Data later revealed that the risk of recurrence or death appeared to be even higher for Tecentriq-chemo versus adjuvant chemo alone….

Now you know — and the Rocky Mountain Showdown trophy will stay in Boulder now until 2029, the next time these two meet (each having switched conferences in the off season). And the Buffs have held it for seven straight years, looking back. Grinning — sorry, Habierto!

[And a house-keeping note: I’ll be off-grid for about ten days later this week, up at a remote cabin high above Lake Tahoe, on the mountain — with my grown wonderful kids… so blogging will be sparse starting this Friday.] Onward — be excellent to one another!

नमस्ते

Not Sure Bill Barr Is A Trust-Worthy Narrator, John.

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Wait — Bill Barr?!

Bill Barr… the lawyer who said Trump could charge the taxpayers to cover his and his spouse’s sexual assault and defamation legal defenses, from acts before he was even a candidate?

That guy?

The guy who said (despite our asylum treaties), undocumented putative asylees could be held… indefinitely, in conditions unfit for Geneva Convention detainees??

The guy who made false statements in Roger Stone’s pardon proceedings?!

And… the guy who (while AG!) lied about the content and import of the Mueller report?

That guy?

Nah — I don’t care what he says about… Columbia U.

Shut it, dough boy.

And… This Is How To LOSE — In The Closing Moments: Make Claims About Pets Being Eaten; Commit… More Felonies.

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Well, the boys have surely seen this, from this morning, by now.

The fivethirtyeight.com crew (now owned by ABC) has long been a very well-regarded simulations shop, for thousands of casino style regression runs, of various likely election outcomes.

As of this morning, it has Kamala winning 2024 about 60 times out of 100, and Tangerine winning about 39 times out of 100.

I like those odds.

Turnout will still matter, especially in Georgia and North Carolina.

But Trump is a dying quail, if he cannot get Pennsylvania — and he did not, last time.

[To be fair, he got it by a few thousand votes in 2016 — but he was a much less well known animal then. 34 felony convictions will matter, plus over a half billion dollars in fraud-laced judgments against him, since. That too will… matter. Kamala will take Penn., and with it… 1600 Penn.]

But to be sure, her path to 271 features hundreds more options than Tangerine’s.

So it goes.