Author Archives: Danzig

UNH Looking Into Claims That Chemistry Professor Ran Offensive Twitter Account – New Hampshire Public Radio

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Students at the University of New Hampshire are protesting and school officials are investigatingallegations that a chemistry department professor is behind an anonymous Twitter account that posted offensive messages and railed against diversity and inclusion efforts while masquerading as an immigrant woman of color.

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UNH confirmed Wednesday it was aware of the allegations and is investigating a member of its faculty.

We are deeply troubled by what weve learned so far and immediately launched an investigation, a university spokesperson said via email.

NHPR is not naming the professor at this time, as it has not independently confirmed that he operated the Twitter account. The professor did not respond to a request for comment, and the school declined to confirm his identity.

The professor is accused of operating the Twitter account with the name "the Science Femme, Woman in STEM." That account, as well as the professors personal account, were both deleted this week after an internet post alleged he was behind both online personas.

The anonymous account was created in January 2019, and attracted more than 13,000 followers. In July, the person behind the account posted a message that they were an immigrant woman of color who grew up in poverty, sleeping on a dirt floor. The professor alleged to be operating the account, according to his online biography, is a white male from the Northeast.

The tweets from the account included a range of material: comparing the Black Lives Matter movement to terrorism, openly misogynist and transphobic messages, and even an expletive-laden message about a soccer team in Sacramento. It also laid out suggestions for how faculty members could undermine diversity and inclusion efforts championed by students in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneopolis police officers.

On June 30, the account tweeted: I was successful in killing my dept's woke statement on recent social unrest. This took several weeks and may have permanently burned some bridges, but I think it's important. It is a toxic ideologiy that cannot be given an inch." The tweet attracted nearly 15,000 likes.

Other users claim the professor used the account to harass and intimidate other scientists on Twitter.

According to screenshots shared with NHPR, the account also posted nude photos of a former California congresswoman leaked without her permission.

Late Tuesday evening, Glen Miller, chair of UNHs chemistry department, emailed faculty members, naming the professor and writing that he admitted to operating the account.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, but when those opinions are dismissive or hurtful or harmful to others, it is not okay with me, Miller wrote in the email, which NHPR obtained.

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Miller added the professor is embarrassed and overwhelmed and shell shocked. He fears that this could be the end of his academic career.

Some students and faculty gathered Thursday outside UNH's Parsons Hall, where science classes are offered, to demand the professor be fired, arguing his statements go beyond expressions of free speech and instead cross into hate speech.

I think all the things weve seen on that account of his make him in no way able to teach at a public university like UNH, said Taylir Bullick, a PhD student in the chemistry department during Thursdays campus protest. Theres no way he can do that safely, and in an equitable way. Hes just gotta go.

Erinn Reville, a fourth-year graduate student in the department, said the protest was meant to show the university and larger scientific community that we dont stand with the racist, the homophobic, the transphobic, the Islamaphobic, the sexist comments that were said on that Twitter account.

Along with operating a lab on campus, the professor also teaches a number of classes, according to his online biography. Jackson Kaspari, a graduate student, said hes gotten to know the professor in recent years, and was in disbelief by the allegations.

This wasnt a small thing by any means, said Kaspari. Clearly he was getting satisfaction in spreading these hateful messages and harassing people."

Kaspari added, Frankly, Im ticked off about the whole thing. And I just think its disgraceful.

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UNH Looking Into Claims That Chemistry Professor Ran Offensive Twitter Account - New Hampshire Public Radio

A universal system for digitization and automatic execution of the chemical synthesis literature – Science Magazine

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Paper in, product out

A typical chemist running a known reaction will start by finding the method described in a published paper. Mehr et al. report a software platform that uses natural language processing to translate the organic chemistry literature directly into editable code, which in turn can be compiled to drive automated synthesis of the compound in the laboratory. The synthesis procedure is intended to be universally applicable to robotic systems operating in a batch reaction architecture. The full process is demonstrated for synthesis of an analgesic as well as common oxidizing and fluorinating agents.

Science, this issue p. 101

Robotic systems for chemical synthesis are growing in popularity but can be difficult to run and maintain because of the lack of a standard operating system or capacity for direct access to the literature through natural language processing. Here we show an extendable chemical execution architecture that can be populated by automatically reading the literature, leading to a universal autonomous workflow. The robotic synthesis code can be corrected in natural language without any programming knowledge and, because of the standard, is hardware independent. This chemical code can then be combined with a graph describing the hardware modules and compiled into platform-specific, low-level robotic instructions for execution. We showcase automated syntheses of 12 compounds from the literature, including the analgesic lidocaine, the Dess-Martin periodinane oxidation reagent, and the fluorinating agent AlkylFluor.

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A universal system for digitization and automatic execution of the chemical synthesis literature - Science Magazine

Not By the Book: Chemistry, Math Gateway Instructors Adapt to Hybrid, Interactive Learning During Pandemic – UKNow

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LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 30, 2020) Instructors in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky are combining technology, learning techniques honed by experience, and human interaction to provide multifaceted learning environments for their students.

The goal, as always, is to keep students engaged with hands-on instruction methods even if the current pandemic limits face-to-face class time.

Students learn by working on problems, not just by listening, said Alberto Corso, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Mathematics. Thats what I tell all of my students. We all like to watch our favorite basketball teams play, but we cant play with them unless we practice. We need to be on the court and practice three-pointers.

The chemistry and mathematics departments present prime examples of this commitment to teaching excellence, as faculty members combine recorded lectures, Zoom class meetings for questions and some in-person work in problem-solving for students taking gateway classes.Teachers discuss this technique as a flipped classroom, where students take an active part in their education. They watch videos to prepare themselves for interaction with faculty and teaching assistants.

The flipped classroom has been the big innovation in teaching over the past 10 years, said Kathi Kern, director and associate provost of Teaching, Learning, and Academic Innovation. Two of our very popular undergraduate courses flipped almost 10 years ago HIS 121 (War and Society), and STA 210 (Introduction to Statistical Reasoning). In each of these courses, faculty pre-recorded lectures so that class time could be devoted to discussion, analysis and experiments, with faculty and graduate students interacting with the undergrads. This style of teaching in Stats 210 was the inspiration for the design of some of the large, interactive classrooms in the Jacob Science Building.

Kern compared flipped classrooms to preparing for discussion in a seminar.

Students shouldnt come to class just to listen to a faculty member, she said. Its like reading a novel on your own and coming to class to discuss it. You could use your class time to watch a documentary film, but if people already have absorbed that material, then they get to interact with each other. They encounter the material initially on their own, but then they make sense of it with their faculty.

The idea of the flipped classroom informs teaching in the colleges gateway chemistry classes, said Allison Soult, senior lecturer and director of general chemistry. Technology has aided instructors in interactive learning, and that technology continues to benefit students during the pandemic. Such programs as the Canvas online learning system and the interactive PlayPosit app make coordinating classes easier and more meaningful.

We already had our students watching videos, and then we had them come to class to do active learning activities, Soult said. Weve recorded four- to six-minute videos some people go a little longer and then we use a tool called PlayPosit. The app lets you insert questions. The questions pop up, and you have to answer them before you can go on. The app then sends the answers back to Canvas for a grade.

The app motivates the students to watch the videos and measures their understanding of the content. Then students can come to class through Zoom and ask more advanced questions.

Before class, I can go in and see that the students were struggling with this topic, Soult said. Then in my Zoom session, I can do an overview of that topic, and Ill record that session as part of my class.

In gateway mathematics classes, faculty members are mixing in-person and online class meetings with recorded lectures to give students a full look at this difficult subject, Corso said. Corso is teaching a yearlong calculus class for biology majors. Faculty members worked diligently before the semester started to plan out lectures, information sessions and recitations with teaching assistants to make sure a mix of in-person, live-conferencing and video lectures would do the trick.

To devise our plan and this is something for all the service classes that math teaches, with about 5,000 students in any given semester the coordinators of the courses met together over the summer every week with a different topic: How do we do the lectures? How do we organize the recitations? How do we organize the exams and quizzes? For my class, we decided wed have videos that the students could watch on their own time, and then the class time would be used for answering questions.

Thus, Corso is teaching his class by mixing lectures and question sessions with working on problems in groups the heart of mathematical learning.

Typically, our calculus classes meet for lecture three times a week and for small recitation sections twice a week, he said. For small recitations, on Tuesdays, half the class is supposed to be in the classroom, and half the class is watching the livestreaming in Echo 360. Students can type questions and ask the TA from home. On Thursdays, its more of a Zoom meeting where students typically work in groups with problem sheets.

Katherine Paullin, lecturer in mathematics, coordinates 22 sections of college algebra, including two joint college-credit classes in high schools. The classes all have the same basic Canvas shell that students can work from and interact with instructors.

We redid the class over the summer of 2019, she said. All students are seeing video lectures that I recorded myself. They have a Canvas page where they can read the definitions of the terms I use and the formulas, and then they get to watch a video of me working problems just as I would in the classroom.

Those recorded video lectures actually can be a benefit for instruction, Kern said.

Students are first introduced to the course topics with a recorded lecture, and then they deepen their understanding with discussions, applications, simulations and sample working problems, she said. Its the same model as the classic lecture with recitation sections or labs: a time to be exposed to the material and then a time to practice. In this model, the practice more often takes place with the professor rather than solely the graduate assistants. Faculty spend a lot of time making their recorded lectures, because its too painful to post something that isnt good. Another advantage is that a recorded lecture can be captioned, which helps all sorts of students. And, of course, a lot of students like having a recorded lecture that they can review before exams.

For one student Grace Kearney, a UK student in Kerns Citizenship, Diversity and Community class the flipped classes offer her decided advantage when it comes to preparation and study.

I think that flipped classes make it easier to learn in class because youve already been exposed to the material, Kearney said. I liked flipped classes, because they give me independence and flexibility as to when I start learning material. Its also nice because you can normally get your questions sorted out in class, instead of having to email your professor.

The college algebra sections demonstrate the problem-solving abilities of university instructors: Paullin points out that different teachers are approaching the class with a great deal of flexibility.

Each instructor is using the class time as they choose, she said. We have three sections that are completely online. Were all doing things a little bit differently.

And its that flexibility along with the technological innovations that assist both online and in-person learning that iscreating opportunities for innovation amid trying times, said UK Provost David W. Blackwell.

Through blending different delivery methods, our faculty members are demonstrating their creativity and dedication to deliver quality courses for our students under difficult health and safety guidelines, Blackwell said. These techniques accelerate and improve learnin
g even beyond the pandemic setting, which is a concept we have been leaning into we want to come out of this better than we were before.

Were all adapting to new modalities, Paullin said. Thats what we do as educators.

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Not By the Book: Chemistry, Math Gateway Instructors Adapt to Hybrid, Interactive Learning During Pandemic - UKNow

The chemical BPA is widespread on beaches around the world – Environmental Health News

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Beach sands around the world are laced with the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), according to new research that calls attention to a less well-known source of exposure to the hormone-mimicking chemical.

Scientists from South Korea and Japan analyzed sand and seawater samples from beaches in 19 countries. They found BPA to be ubiquitous. Substantial amounts of the chemicalused in can liners, paper receipts and plastic products including food and beverage containerslittered all of the beaches, peaking at upwards of 200 milligrams of BPA per kilogram of sand in Greece. That would be equivalent to about 200 credit cards scattered across an American football field.

"The high BPA concentrations found on sandy beaches in this study should be a global concern," write the authors.

Scientists had already shown that people can be exposed to BPA through many sources including the air, food and water. "This is another study inventorying the extent of plastics contaminating our living environment," Rolf Halden, a sustainability scientist at Arizona State University, who was not involved in the study, told EHN. "It makes us aware that when we lie on the beach, we're not only lying on a bed of sand but a bed of plastics."

BPA-containing plastics break down over time into tiny pieces, known as microplastics and nanoplastics, often with the help of the sea, surf and sand. The sand samples tested by the researchers included these fragments mixed with sand, as well as sand particles on which BPA and other chemicals have hitched a ride. They discovered that BPA concentrations were significantly higher in the sand than in seawater, and varied widely between beaches. A factor of nearly 10,000 separated levels in sands sampled from Greece and Slovenia, for example. Samples from six U.S. beaches ranged between 0.4 and 45 milligrams per kilogram, or parts per million.

The BPA concentrations uncovered in the new study surprised Thomas Zoeller, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "Parts per million quantities, in many of these places, is pretty outrageous," Zoeller, who was not involved in the study, told EHN.

Zoeller noted that exposure to such highly contaminated sand could be enough to cause health effects. However, he also cautioned that the study faced some significant limitations. "It's difficult to extrapolate from these numbers. They don't represent some average for a country, or even a single beach," he said. "Still, everywhere they looked they found it."

In a statement to EHN, Steven G. Hentges, senior director of the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group at the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, said that "government agencies around the world consider BPA to have a low potential to accumulate to any appreciable extent in organisms that come into contact with it in the environment." BPA is "one of the most widely studied chemicals in the world, and government scientists around the globe have found that it does not pose a health risk at typical exposure level," he stated.

Thousands of peer-reviewed studies from academics, however, have concluded that absorbing or ingesting BPA may harm people at doses 20,000 times lower than what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says is safedoses comparable to levels at which most of us are exposed. In November 2019, EHN published a year-long investigation which found U.S. regulators were willfully ignoring research that increasingly links low-dose BPA exposures to harmful health impacts ranging from birth defects to cancer.

"This is a chemical people should not be exposed to," Frederick vom Saal, a professor of biology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, told EHN. He lamented the lack of progress in the U.S. on regulating BPA. "There are other parts of the world that are taking this seriously," said vom Saal, who was not involved in the new study. France banned the use of the chemical in food and beverage packaging and utensils after an assessment by the French Agency for Food, Environmental Health and Safety determined that it is hazardous at much lower levels than the FDA considers hazardous.

Beachgoers may be particularly at risk due to the use of sunscreen and other oils and lotions. Vom Saal published a study in 2014 that found chemical mixtures used in a variety of personal care products facilitate the movement of BPA and other chemicals through the skin. More than 300 different chemicals can act as permeation enhancers. The use of hand sanitizer before handling receipts can increase BPA absorption through the skin by up to 200-fold, according to vom Saal's study. Beachgoers today, amidst a pandemic, may well be lathering up with sanitizer, too.

"BPA is a very sticky chemical," said vom Saal. "So, would it stick to sand? Absolutely. And if you're using sunscreen or skin lotions or hand sanitizer, then this stuff goes right through your skin."

Meanwhile, Halden's research team has detected BPA and other molecules from commonly used plastics in liver and fat of all 47 human tissue samples investigated.

"These are materials we're using on a tremendous scale without thinking about their afterlife and the consequences they pose to our health," said Halden.

Bum Gun Kwon from Chosun College of Science and Technology in South Korea, and author on the study, expressed the same concern. "Although there may be differences in degrees, large amounts of discarded plastic are too common," he told EHN in an email.

"Strict new rules for the use of sandy beaches should be set and followed," said Kwon. "For example, rules restricting the use of plastic materials derived from petroleum."

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The chemical BPA is widespread on beaches around the world - Environmental Health News

New carbon allotrope predicted to hit bandgap sweet spot – Chemistry World

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Computational scientists in China have simulated a graphene allotrope featuring different hybridisations of carbon that becomes a semiconductor when compressed.

This new allotrope, Me-graphene, combines sp3-hybridised carbon atoms anchored to four neighbouring benzene rings with sp2-hybridised carbon atoms. The result is a one-atom thick structure containing octagons, hexagons and pentagons, which is open and slightly corrugated. The structure could give scientists a way to bridge differences between the characteristics of traditional graphene (an electronically conductive semi-metal) and the so-far theoretical semiconductor penta-graphene.

Despite having exceptional strength, thermal and electron conductivity, traditional graphenes use in electronic components (rather than just connections) is limited, as it cant easily switch between conducting and insulating states. This is because it lacks a bandgap.

Xiaojun Wu of the University of Science and Technology of China and colleagues have discovered that Me-graphene could be structurally stable up to temperatures of 3500K. Added to this, it has higher mobility of charge at room temperature than silicon and when compressed it turns into a semiconductor with a large bandgap but does not deform. And, with a calculated energy of formation that is more achievable than other graphene allotropes, Wus team suggest Me-graphenes characteristics could see it feature in next-generation nanoscale electronics and photoelectrics.

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New carbon allotrope predicted to hit bandgap sweet spot - Chemistry World

Public Water Testing For N.H. State PFAS Chemical Limits To Begin After Year-Long Delay – New Hampshire Public Radio

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Thursday marks the restart of widespread testing for PFAS chemicals in New Hampshires public water supplies, after a year-long delay due to a lawsuit from PFAS-maker 3M.

PFAS are industrial chemicals, widely found in groundwater and linked to health problems including liver and kidney disease, high cholesterol and reproductive, developmental and immune issues, as well as potentially some cancers.

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The chemicals were common until at least the early 2000s in many household products, but aren't subject to binding federally regulations. New Hampshire is one of a small but growing number of states with its own PFAS limits.

The state Department of Environmental Services briefly enacted these new rules last year, before a judge granted an injunction that halted enforcement. This summer, the state legislature re-authorized the limits itself and put an end to the court case.

Starting Thursday, public water systems of all sizes, as well as schools, will have to test on a quarterly basis for four kinds of PFAS in their water supply.

If their average levels over four consecutive quarters exceed any the state's limits, which are some of the strictest in the country, they could have to invest millions of dollars in treatment technology or new water sources.

Brandon Kernan, the head of the DES Drinking Water Bureau, told NHPR that voluntary sampling from 2016 to 2019 showed close to 200,000 people affected by PFAS contamination.

It means contamination was present at one time in 7% of water systems, serving more than a quarter of public water users in the state. The state says this rate is comparable to a naturally occurring contaminant.

Kernan said in an email that many systems have since addressed the issue: in many cases the source of water has been taken offline, blended with another source to reduce PFAS levels or had treatment installed.

Several hundred systems also conducted tests at the end of 2019 to comply with the new limits before the court injunction took effect. Most were small housing developments and schools, along with some larger systems.

Kernan said data on those tests compiled in March showedexcessive PFAS levelsin about 5% of systems.

The state says it will offer water systems a waiver to use that fourth-quarter 2019 data as part of their average results over the next year.

Jason Randall is the superintendent of the Plymouth Village Water and Sewer District, one of the plaintiffs recruited by 3M to join the lawsuit that delayed the rules last year. He told NHPR in an interview that Plymouth did not test for PFAS at the end of 2019, but will begin doing so this quarter.

Randall is still concerned that the new PFAS limits and others planned in the next few years will create uncertainty for water ratepayers. He calls the cost of testing an expense up and coming for Plymouth, and says the cost of any potential treatment is still an unknown at this point.

The state is in the process of launching a new $50 million low-interest loan fund to help systems comply with the rules. Other sources, like federally-backed drinking water revolving loans and the state Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund, could also be used.

New Hampshire is also part of a huge lawsuit against PFAS manufacturers like 3M and DuPont. Similar suits have netted hundreds of millions of dollars for contaminated areas in the past. New Hampshire will augment the new loan fund with any settlement it may eventually receive.

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Public Water Testing For N.H. State PFAS Chemical Limits To Begin After Year-Long Delay - New Hampshire Public Radio

Sarepta Therapeutics Investigational Gene Therapy SRP-9003 for the Treatment of Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2E Shows Sustained Functional…

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-- Continued functional improvements were observed at 18 months in the low-dose cohort --

-- First look at functional outcomes in high-dose cohort found improvements 6 months after administration --

-- Results in both cohorts continue to reinforce safety and tolerability profile of SRP-9003 --

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc.(NASDAQ:SRPT), the leader in precision genetic medicine for rare diseases, today announced positive results from the ongoing study of SRP-9003 (rAAVrh74.MHCK7.hSGCB), the Companys investigational gene therapy for limb-girdle muscular dystrophy Type 2E (LGMD2E). Results included 18-month functional data from three clinical trial participants in the low-dose cohort and 6-month functional data from three participants in the high-dose cohort. SRP-9003 is in development for the treatment of LGMD2E (also known as beta-sarcoglycanopathy and LGMDR4), a devastating monogenic neuromuscular disease caused by a lack of beta-sarcoglycan proteins. SRP-9003 is a gene construct that transduces skeletal and cardiac muscle, delivering a gene that codes for the full-length beta-sarcoglycan protein, the absence of which is the sole cause of the progressive degeneration and a shortened lifespan characterized by the disease.

There are currently no approved treatments for people with LGMD2E a disease that causes significant disability in children and often leads to early mortality. Its very encouraging that we continue to see consistent, positive data from our investigational gene therapy SRP-9003 across several measures, as we know the community needs more options, said Louise Rodino-Klapac, Ph.D., senior vice president of gene therapy, Sarepta Therapeutics. The improvements in functional measures at 18- and 6- months in participants from both cohorts who received SRP-9003 are distinctly different from what an age-matched, natural history group would predict with LGMD2E. This sustained durability of the response in functional outcomes reinforces that SRP-9003 is getting to the muscle and suggestive of improvement against disease-mediated muscle damage. When coupled with the strong expression results and encouraging safety profile seen to date, todays results increase our confidence in the construct and provide additional evidence as we advance the higher dose of SRP-9003 into the next stage of clinical testing.

Efficient transduction in skeletal muscle and robust beta-sarcoglycan protein expression were seen in both dose cohorts following infusion with SRP-9003, and significant creatine kinase (CK) reductions were observed at 90 days. Cohort-specific results as follows:

Cohort 1 (low dose), at 18 months:

Cohort 2 (high dose), at 6 months:

About SRP-9003 and the studySRP-9003 uses the AAVrh74 vector, which is designed to be systemically and robustly delivered to skeletal, diaphragm and cardiac muscle, making it an ideal candidate to treat peripheral neuromuscular diseases. AAVrh74 has lower immunogenicity rates than reported with other human AAV vectors. The MHCK7 promoter has been chosen for its ability to robustly express in the heart, which is critically important for patients with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy Type 2E (LGMD2E), also known as beta-sarcoglycanopathy and LGMDR4, many of whom die from pulmonary or cardiac complications.

This first-in-human study is evaluating a single intravenous infusion of SRP-9003 among children with LGMD2E between the ages of 4 and 15 years with significant symptoms of disease. The SRP-9003 study has two cohorts, each studying a different dose-per-kilogram based on the weight of the patient. Three participants in the low-dose cohort (Cohort 1) were treated with a one-time infusion of SRP-9003 dosed at 5x1013vg/kg and an additional three participants in the high-dose cohort (Cohort 2) received a one-time infusion dosed at 2x1014vg/kg. The six participants were between the ages of 4 and 13. Post-treatment biopsies were taken at 60 days.

Sarepta has exclusive rights to the LGMD2E gene therapy program initially developed at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Childrens Hospital.

About Limb-Girdle Muscular DystrophyLimb-girdle muscular dystrophies are genetic diseases that cause progressive, debilitating weakness and wasting that begin in muscles around the hips and shoulders before progressing to muscles in the arms and legs.

Patients with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy Type 2E (LGMD2E) begin showing neuromuscular symptoms such as difficulty running, jumping and climbing stairs before age 10. The disease, which is an autosomal recessive subtype of LGMD, progresses to loss of ambulation in the teen years and often leads to early mortality. There is currently no treatment or cure for LGMD2E.

Sarepta has five LGMD gene therapy programs in development, including subtypes for LGMD2E, LGMD2D, LGMD2C, LGMD2B and LGMD2L, and holds an option for a sixth program for LGMD2A.

AboutSarepta TherapeuticsAt Sarepta, we are leading a revolution in precision genetic medicine and every day is an opportunity to change the lives of people living with rare disease. The Company has built an impressive position in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and in gene therapies for limb-girdle muscular dystrophies (LGMDs), mucopolysaccharidosis type IIIA, Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT), and other CNS-related disorders, with more than 40 programs in various stages of development. The Companys programs and research focus span several therapeutic modalities, including RNA, gene therapy and gene editing. For more information, please visitwww.sarepta.comor follow us onTwitter,LinkedIn,InstagramandFacebook.

Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release contains "forward-looking statements." Any statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," "intends," "potential," "possible" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include statements regarding future clinical testing for SRP-9003, SRP-9003 being the ideal candidate to treat peripheral neuromuscular diseases, the potential benefits of SRP-9003 and potential market opportunities.

These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Known risk factors include, among others: success in preclinical trials and clinical trials, especially if based on a small patient sample, does not ensure that later clinical trials will be successful; the data presented in this release may not be consistent with the final data set and analysis thereof or result in a safe or effective treatment benefit; different methodologies, assumptions and applications we utilize to assess particular safety or efficacy parameters may yield different statistical results, and even if we believe the data collected from clinical trials of our product candidates are positive, these data may not be sufficient to support approval by the FDA or foreign regulatory authorities; if the actual number of patients suffering from LGMD is smaller than estimated, our revenue and ability to achieve profitability may be adversely affected; we may not be able to execute on our business plans and goals, including meeting our expected or planned regulatory milestones and timelines, clinical development plans, and bringing our product candidates to market, due to a variety of reasons, some of which may be outside of our control, including possible limitations of company financial and other resources, manufacturing limitations that may not be anticipated or resolved for in a timely manner, regulatory, court or agency decisions, such as decisions by the United States Patent and Trademark Office with respect to patents that cover our product candidates and the COVID-19 pandemic; and even if Sareptas programs result in new commercialized products, Sarepta may not achieve the expected revenues from the sale of such products; and those risks identified under the heading Risk Factors in Sareptas most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019, and most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as other SEC filings made by the Company which you are encouraged to review.

Any of the foregoing risks could materially and adversely affect the Companys business, results of operations and the trading price of Sareptas common stock. For a detailed description of risks and uncertainties Sarepta faces, you are encouraged to review the SEC filings made by Sarepta. We caution investors not to place considerable reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Sarepta does not undertake any obligation to publicly update its forward-looking statements based on events or circumstances after the date hereof.

InternetPosting of InformationWe routinely post information that may be important to investors in the 'For Investors' section of our website atwww.sarepta.com.Weencourageinvestorsandpotentialinvestorsto consult our website regularly for important information about us.

Source:Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc.

Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc.

Investors:Ian Estepan, 617-274-4052iestepan@sarepta.com

Media:Tracy Sorrentino, 617-301-8566tsorrentino@sarepta.com

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Sarepta Therapeutics Investigational Gene Therapy SRP-9003 for the Treatment of Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2E Shows Sustained Functional...

Rocket Pharmaceuticals Announces Two Presentations at the European Society for Immunodeficiencies 2020 Meeting – Business Wire

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NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rocket Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: RCKT) (Rocket), a clinical-stage company advancing an integrated and sustainable pipeline of genetic therapies for rare childhood disorders, today announces two presentations at the European Society for Immunodeficiencies (ESID) 2020 Meeting to be held virtually October 14-17, 2020. An oral presentation will provide an update on data from the Phase 1/2 clinical trial of RP-L201 for Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency-I (LAD-I). An e-poster will highlight preclinical study data on RP-L401 for Infantile Malignant Osteopetrosis (IMO).

Additional presentation details can be found below:

Oral Presentation

Title: A Phase 1/2 Study of Lentiviral-Mediated Ex-Vivo Gene Therapy for Pediatric Patients with Severe Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency-I (LAD-I): Results from Phase 1 Session Title: TreatmentPresenter: Donald B. Kohn, M.D., Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, Pediatrics (Hematology/Oncology), Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, and member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of California, Los AngelesSession Date: Friday, October 16, 2020Session Time: 10:45 a.m. 12:01 p.m. CESTLecture Time: 11:45 a.m. CESTLocation: Hall D

This session will be followed by a Q&A from 12:01 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. CEST

E-Poster

Title: Preclinical Efficacy and Safety of EFS.HTCIRG1-LV Supports IMO Gene Therapy Clinical Trial InitiationPresenter: Ilana Moscatelli, Ph.D., Associate Researcher, Division of Molecular Medicine and Gene Therapy, Lund University, Sweden

About Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency-I

Severe Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency-I (LAD-I) is a rare, autosomal recessive pediatric disease caused by mutations in the ITGB2 gene encoding for the beta-2 integrin component CD18. CD18 is a key protein that facilitates leukocyte adhesion and extravasation from blood vessels to combat infections. As a result, children with severe LAD-I (less than 2% normal expression) are often affected immediately after birth. During infancy, they suffer from recurrent life-threatening bacterial and fungal infections that respond poorly to antibiotics and require frequent hospitalizations. Children who survive infancy experience recurrent severe infections including pneumonia, gingival ulcers, necrotic skin ulcers, and septicemia. Without a successful bone marrow transplant, mortality in patients with severe LAD-I is 60-75% prior to the age of 2 and survival beyond the age of 5 is uncommon. There is a high unmet medical need for patients with severe LAD-I.

Rockets LAD-I research is made possible by a grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (Grant Number CLIN2-11480). The contents of this press release are solely the responsibility of Rocket and do not necessarily represent the official views of CIRM or any other Agency of the State of California.

About Infantile Malignant Osteopetrosis

Infantile Malignant Osteopetrosis (IMO) is a rare, severe autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in the TCIRG1 gene, which is critical for the process of bone resorption. Mutations in TCIRG1 interfere with the function of osteoclasts, cells which are essential for normal bone remodeling and growth, leading to skeletal malformations, including fractures and cranial deformities which cause neurologic abnormalities including vision and hearing loss. Patients often have endocrine abnormalities and progressive, frequently fatal bone marrow failure. As a result, death is common within the first decade of life. IMO has an estimated incidence of 1 in 200,000. The only treatment option currently available for IMO is an allogenic bone marrow transplant (HSCT), which allows for the restoration of bone resorption by donor-derived osteoclasts which originate from hematopoietic cells. Long-term survival rates are lower in IMO than those associated with HSCT for many other non-malignant hematologic disorders; severe HSCT-related complications are frequent. There is an urgent need for additional treatment options.

RP-L401 was in-licensed from Lund University and Medizinische Hochschule Hannover.

About Rocket Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Rocket Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: RCKT) (Rocket) is advancing an integrated and sustainable pipeline of genetic therapies that correct the root cause of complex and rare childhood disorders. The companys platform-agnostic approach enables it to design the best therapy for each indication, creating potentially transformative options for patients afflicted with rare genetic diseases. Rocket's clinical programs using lentiviral vector (LVV)-based gene therapy are for the treatment of Fanconi Anemia (FA), a difficult to treat genetic disease that leads to bone marrow failure and potentially cancer, Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency-I (LAD-I), a severe pediatric genetic disorder that causes recurrent and life-threatening infections which are frequently fatal, Pyruvate Kinase Deficiency (PKD) a rare, monogenic red blood cell disorder resulting in increased red cell destruction and mild to life-threatening anemia and Infantile Malignant Osteopetrosis (IMO), a bone marrow-derived disorder. Rockets first clinical program using adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based gene therapy is for Danon disease, a devastating, pediatric heart failure condition. For more information about Rocket, please visit http://www.rocketpharma.com.

Rocket Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Various statements in this release concerning Rocket's future expectations, plans and prospects, including without limitation, Rocket's expectations regarding its guidance for 2020 in light of COVID-19, the safety, effectiveness and timing of product candidates that Rocket may develop, to treat Fanconi Anemia (FA), Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency-I (LAD-I), Pyruvate Kinase Deficiency (PKD), Infantile Malignant Osteopetrosis (IMO) and Danon Disease, and the safety, effectiveness and timing of related pre-clinical studies and clinical trials, may constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other federal securities laws and are subject to substantial risks, uncertainties and assumptions. You should not place reliance on these forward-looking statements, which often include words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "will give," "estimate," "seek," "will," "may," "suggest" or similar terms, variations of such terms or the negative of those terms. Although Rocket believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, Rocket cannot guarantee such outcomes. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including, without limitation, Rocket's ability to monitor the impact of COVID-19 on its business operations and take steps to ensure the safety of patients, families and employees, the interest from patients and families for participation in each of Rockets ongoing trials, our expectations regarding when clinical trial sites will resume normal business operations, our expectations regarding the delays and impact of COVID-19 on clinical sites, patient enrollment, trial timelines and data readouts, our expectations regarding our drug supply for our ongoing and anticipated trials, actions of regulatory agencies, which may affect the initiation, timing and progress of pre-clinical studies and clinical trials of its product candidates, Rocket's dependence on third parties for development, manufacture, marketing, sales and distribution of product candidates, the outcome of litigation, and unexpected expenditures, as well as those risks more fully discussed in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Rocket's Annual Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2020, filed August 5, 2020 with the SEC. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. All such statements speak only as of the date made, and Rocket undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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Rocket Pharmaceuticals Announces Two Presentations at the European Society for Immunodeficiencies 2020 Meeting - Business Wire

Zolgensma data including patients with more severe SMA at baseline further demonstrate therapeutic benefit, including prolonged event-free survival,…

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Basel, October 1, 2020 Novartis Gene Therapies today announced new interim data from the ongoing Phase 3 STR1VE-EU clinical trial for Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec) that demonstrated patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) Type 1 continued to experience significant therapeutic benefit, including event-free survival, rapid and sustained improvement in motor function and motor milestone achievement, including for some patients with more aggressive disease at baseline compared to previous trials. SMA is a rare, genetic neuromuscular disease caused by a lack of a functional SMN1 gene that results in the progressive and irreversible loss of motor neurons, affecting muscle functions, including breathing, swallowing, and basic movement.1,2,3 These data as of December 31, 2019, and presented today during a virtual Clinical Trial Poster Session as part of the World Muscle Society (WMS) 2020 Virtual Congress, support the robust clinical evidence that has demonstrated a consistent, transformative benefit across Zolgensma clinical trials for the treatment of patients with SMA.

We are seeing further evidence of the potential of Zolgensma to effectively halt motor neuron loss following a one-time, intravenous infusion. In STR1VE-EU, patients achieved rapid improvements in motor function following treatment with Zolgensma, and most have already achieved motor milestones not observed in the natural history of SMA Type 1, said Professor Eugenio Mercuri, M.D., PhD., Department of Pediatric Neurology, Catholic University, Rome, Italy. These interim results are especially encouraging considering STR1VE-EU includes some patients with a more severe phenotype than in the START and STR1VE-US studies, further supporting the gene therapys positive benefit/risk profile, even in this more fragile population.

"These strong interim results from the STR1VE-EU clinical trial continue to demonstrate consistent and significant therapeutic benefit in patients with SMA Type 1, the most common form of the disease, adding to the robust body of clinical evidence for Zolgensma, said Shephard Mpofu, M.D., SVP, Chief Medical Officer, Novartis Gene Therapies. With more than 600 patients now treated, including some more than five years post-treatment and more than five years old, these data further reinforce the transformative benefit a one-time dose of Zolgensma has on SMA patients.

Phase 3 STR1VE-EU Data as of December 31, 2019STR1VE-EU is designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a single, one-time IV infusion of Zolgensma in patients with SMA Type 1 who are less than six months of age at the time of gene therapy, with one or two copies of theSMN2backup gene and who have bi-allelicSMN1gene deletion or point mutations. The mean age of dosing was 4.1 months and the mean age at the onset of symptoms was 1.6 months. The mean Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Infant Test of Neuromuscular Disorders (CHOP INTEND) score at baseline was 28. Thirty-one of 33 patients (93.9%) were able to swallow thin liquids, and 10 patients (30.3%) required feeding support at baseline. Nine of thirty patients (27.3%) required ventilatory support at baseline. STR1VE-EU is distinct in its inclusion and exclusion criteria and baseline clinical characteristics of enrolled patients compared with START or STR1VE-US. Specifically, some patients in STR1VE-EU had a more severe disease phenotype at baseline, including lower CHOP-INTEND scores and the need for nutritional and ventilatory support.

At last visit before the data cutoff, patients in STR1VE-EU were between 6.9 and 18.6 months of age, and mean duration in the study was 10.6 (1.815.4) months. Thirty-one out of 32 (97%) patients in the intent-to-treat (ITT) population survived event-free, including 30 (93.8%) who could have reached 10.5 months of age and 18 (56.3%) who could have reached 13.6 months of age. An event is defined as the need for tracheostomy or the requirement of 16 hours of respiratory assistance per day (via non-invasive ventilatory support) for 14 consecutive days in the absence of an acute reversible illness, excluding peri-operative ventilation. Untreated natural history indicates that only 50% and 25% of babies with SMA Type 1 will survive event-free by the time they reach 10.5 months of age and 13.6 months of age, respectively.3

Twenty-one patients (65.6%) achieved motor milestones not observed in the natural history of SMA Type 1. This includes six patients (18.8%) who could sit independently for 10 seconds (the primary efficacy endpoint), 20 patients (66.7%) who gained head control, eight patients (25%) who were able to roll from back to sides and one patient who could stand with assistance, crawl and walk with assistance. The mean increase in CHOP INTEND from baseline was 5.9 points (n=31) which was observed as early as at one month post-dosing, 10.1 points at 3 months (n=29) post-dosing, and 13.3 points at six months (n=27) post-dosing. Twenty-one children (65.6%) enrolled in STR1VE-EU achieved and maintained a CHOP INTEND score of 40 points and 12 children (37.5%) were able to achieve a score of 50. According to natural history, untreated patients with SMA Type 1 almost never achieve a CHOP INTEND score 40.3,4

The majority (91.7%) of patients who were free of ventilatory support at baseline remained either completely free of ventilatory support or received prophylactic BiPAP support during the study for acute reasons. Two-thirds (66.7%) of patients in the ITT population were able to feed orally without the need for feeding support, an important indicator of stabilization/halting of disease progression.

As previously reported, one patient discontinued the study because of a serious adverse event of hypoxic-ischemic brain damage and respiratory distress that resulted in death. Novartis and the investigator considered the events and death to be unrelated to treatment with Zolgensma based on autopsy findings. Thirty-two of 33 patients were reported to have at least one adverse event (AE), of which six patients experienced serious adverse events that were considered by the investigator to be related to Zolgensma. Liver transaminase elevations, some of which were reported as adverse events, were experienced by 29 of 33 patients (87.9%), but all resolved with the use of prednisolone. Four patients had reported decreases in platelet counts <75,000, three of which were isolated laboratory abnormalities without adverse events reported. Overall, no new safety signals have been identified and the reported adverse events are consistent with the cumulative safety profile with Zolgensma.

Novartis Gene Therapies is grateful to the courageous patients and families who participate in clinical trials, enabling the company to further its efforts to make a meaningful difference in the lives of patients with rare genetic diseases.

About Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec)Zolgensma is designed to address the genetic root cause of SMA by providing a functional copy of the human SMN gene to halt disease progression through sustained SMN protein expression with a single, one-time IV infusion. Zolgensma was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May 2019 and represents the first approved therapeutic in Novartis Gene Therapies proprietary platform to treat rare, monogenic diseases using gene therapy.5 In addition to the United States, Zolgensma is approved in Japan, Europe and Brazil. More than 600 patients have been treated with Zolgensma, including clinical trials, commercially and through the managed access program. Novartis Gene Therapies is pursuing registration in close to three dozen countries with regulatory decisions anticipated in Switzerland, Canada, Israel, Australia, and South Korea in late-2020 or early 2021.5

Novartis Gene Therapies has an exclusive, worldwide license with Nationwide Children's Hospital to both the intravenous and intrathecal delivery of AAV9 gene therapy for the treatment of all types of SMA; has an exclusive, worldwide license from REGENXBIO for any recombinant AAV vector in its intellectual property portfolio for the in vivo gene therapy treatment of SMA in humans; an exclusive, worldwide licensing agreement with Gnthon for in vivo delivery of AAV9 vector into the central nervous system for the treatment of SMA; and a non-exclusive, worldwide license agreement with AskBio for the use of its self-complementary DNA technology for the treatment of SMA.

About Spinal Muscular AtrophySMA is the leading genetic cause of infant death.1,2 If left untreated, SMA Type 1 leads to death or the need for permanent ventilation by the age of two in more than 90% of cases.3,4SMA is a rare, genetic neuromuscular disease caused by a lack of a functional SMN1 gene, resulting in the rapid and irreversible loss of motor neurons, affecting muscle functions, including breathing, swallowing and basic movement.1 It is imperative to diagnose SMA and begin treatment, including proactive supportive care, as early as possible to halt irreversible motor neuron loss and disease progression.5 This is especially critical in SMA Type 1, where motor neuron degeneration starts before birth and escalates quickly. Loss of motor neurons cannot be reversed, so SMA patients with symptoms at the time of treatment will likely require some supportive respiratory, nutritional and/or musculoskeletal care to maximize functional abilities.6 More than 30% of patients with SMA Type 2 will die by age 25.7

About Novartis Gene TherapiesNovartis Gene Therapies (formerly AveXis) is reimagining medicine to transform the lives of people living with rare genetic diseases. Utilizing cutting-edge technology, we are turning promising gene therapies into proven treatments, beginning with our transformative gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). This therapy is now approved in the U.S., Japan, Europe and Brazil, and additional registrations are being pursued in close to three dozen countries, with regulatory decisions anticipated in Switzerland, Canada, Israel, Australia, Argentina and South Korea in late 2020 or early 2021. Our robust AAV-based pipeline is advancing treatments for Rett syndrome; a genetic form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) caused by mutations in the superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) gene; and Friedreichs ataxia. We are powered by the worlds largest gene therapy manufacturing footprint of more than one million square feet, enabling us to bring these therapies to patients around the world at quality and scale.

DisclaimerThis press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as potential, can, will, plan, may, could, would, expect, anticipate, seek, look forward, believe, committed, investigational, pipeline, launch, or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational or approved products described in this press release, or regarding potential future revenues from such products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the investigational or approved products described in this press release will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that such products will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, our expectations regarding such products could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures and requirements for increased pricing transparency; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political, economic and business conditions, including the effects of and efforts to mitigate pandemic diseases such as COVID-19; safety, quality, data integrity or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AGs current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About NovartisNovartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend peoples lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the worlds top companies investing in research and development. Novartis products reach nearly 800 million people globally and we are finding innovative ways to expand access to our latest treatments. About 109,000 people of more than 140 nationalities work at Novartis around the world. Find out more athttps://www.novartis.com.

Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at https://twitter.com/novartisnewsFor Novartis multimedia content, please visit https://www.novartis.com/news/media-libraryFor questions about the site or required registration, please contact media.relations@novartis.com

References1. Anderton RS and Mastaglia FL. Expert Rev Neurother. 2015;15:895908.2. National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD). Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Available at: http://rarediseases.org/rarediseases/spinal-muscular-atrophy/. Accessed October 29, 2019.3. Finkel RS, McDermott MP, Kaufmann P. et al. Observational study of spinal muscular atrophy type I and implications for clinical trials. Neurology. 2014;83:8107.4. Kolb SJ, et al. Ann Neurol. 2017;82:88391.5. SolerBotija C, et al. Brain. 2002;125:162434.6. Wang CH, et al. J Child Neurol. 2007;22:102749.7. Darras BT, Finkel RS. Natural history of spinal muscular atrophy. In: Sumner CJ, Paushkin S, Ko CP, eds. Spinal Muscular Atrophy: Disease Mechanisms and Therapy, 2nd ed. London, UK: Academic Press/Elsevier;2017:399421.

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Novartis Investor RelationsCentral investor relations line: +41 61 324 7944E-mail: investor.relations@novartis.com

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Zolgensma data including patients with more severe SMA at baseline further demonstrate therapeutic benefit, including prolonged event-free survival,...

Emergentology: We Need to Take Race Out of Algorithms : Emergency Medicine News – LWW Journals

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Figure:

racial bias, algorithms

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published an article entitled Hidden in Plain SightReconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms about race and racism in medicine, specifically looking at algorithms and calculators that include race (or more often, Black v. non-Black) in their inputs. (June 17, 2020; https://bit.ly/3iqGYiT.)

We thought long and hard about how MDCalc (https://www.mdcalc.com/) should respond, and we eventually came up with a patient care-based policy statement that would support our goals: Help clinicians deliver the best quality care to patients and use evidence in their practices. (Read it at http://www.mdcalc.com/race.)

We decided to summarize briefly how race affects the results of an algorithm or score so clinicians can be better informed about the score they're using and make race an optional input when possible, allowing clinicians to opt in or out of including it. We will also specifically draw attention to race when it exists in a calculator in the instructions sections and evidence content to provide clearer, transparent information for our users.

As I looked deeper, I realized the whole thing is really, really messy. You've got:

While I won't cover all the specific examples in our statement, this got me wondering again about our heuristics in medicine. How and why have we decided to see certain trends and correlations and use those but not others? It's like my dog: I've trained her to sit on command, and she knows she's going for a walk when I put on my socks. She somehow also knows when I'm about to give her a bath, and she hides. There must be something I'm doing that she's picked up on as a pattern, but I'm completely oblivious.

Why is it fat fertile female 40 for cholecystitis when there are so many men with it? Or the worst headache of your life for subarachnoid hemorrhage, not sudden-onset headache? Or reheated rice for Bacillus cereus or clindamycin for Clostridioides difficile diarrhea? (Some of these may ring true in your experience, while others don't at all. I reheat my rice all the time and happily risk every bite.)

This is the challenge of our craft, which is part science, part art, part profession, and part trade. The problem is that some of these teachings and mantras are true, while others are stereotypes, some are old wives' tales, and some are based on one doctor's case report disseminated by a medical journal and taken as medical fact. What any doctor has in his head is a uniquely human mix of medical school textbook training, mnemonics, residency training, edicts issued by the attendings we respected and trusted, cases from residency and beyond that went well or poorly, trends and patterns our brains consciously and subconsciously absorb, heuristics and hunches, and probably least of all, evidence-based medicine. Often our brains turn that into a gut feeling, Spidey sense, or gestalt so we can generate a diagnosis and differential in less than a second. Pretty amazing but not without fault. Just like in any data analysis, including our brains, if it's garbage in, it's garbage out.

Take the disease-causing cystic fibrosis (CF) resulting from a mutation in the CFTR protein. CFTR mutations that can cause CF are present in up to one in 25 people of Northern European ancestry. One single mutation is the cause of about half of CF cases, but they have found more than 1500 other mutations in the gene. I definitely think of CF as a Northern European disease, to the extent that I probably don't consider it when I see certain children in the ED who don't look Northern European to me. That's my gestalt brain talking. The factual brain, however, knows that CF can present in people who don't look Northern European and that I've met people with CF who don't fit the stereotype. Yet my factual brain has to work really hard to correct the gestalt brain's error.

It takes a lot of effort to fix our gestalt brains, especially once they have formed. We need more evidence and better evidence in them as foundations in medical school and residency because once they get cemented, they are set. Like cement.

Similarly, we need to move away from race and toward ancestry as much as we can. The promise of cracking the genetic code is decades away, and most patients can't wait that long. Ancestry, for now, might help us while we wait for a bedside genetic decoder test. Race and racism will unfortunately be with us for a very long time, but we can do our part by trying to move research and evidence away from blunt pigeonholes like race.

Share this article on Twitter and Facebook.

Access the links in EMN by reading this on our website, http://www.EM-News.com.

Comments? Write to us at emn@lww.com.

Dr. Walkeris an emergency physician at Kaiser San Francisco. He is the developer and co-creator of MDCalc (www.mdcalc.com), a medical calculator for clinical scores, equations, and risk stratifications, which also has an app (http://apps.mdcalc.com/), and The NNT (www.thennt.com), a number-needed-to-treat tool to communicate benefit and harm. Follow him on Twitter@grahamwalker, and read his past columns athttp://bit.ly/EMN-Emergentology.

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Emergentology: We Need to Take Race Out of Algorithms : Emergency Medicine News - LWW Journals

Its sale to Allergan was called off at the last minute. One year later, a biotech co-founded by Henri Termeer finds a new buyer – Endpoints News

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Lysosomal Therapeutics went into JP Morgan 2017 with a sale all but sealed. With $100 million upfront and a $48 million cash infusion to execute on the R&D plan, Allergan lined up an exclusive option to buy the Cambridge, MA-based biotech once the Phase I safety and proof-of-concept data for its lead drug are in.

The team delivered the results by the end of 2018, CEO Kees Been recalled, and after several months of negotiations they had shaken hands over a June buyout.

We had agreed to be acquired by Allergan, he told Endpoints News. And of course just a few days before they were supposed to acquire us, they announced their acquisition by AbbVie which basically terminated the deal.

At the urging of investors, he spent the next year scouting a new buyer for LTIs slate of experimental Parkinsons disease treatment, led by a glucocerebrosidase enzyme activator. The company finally settled on BIAL, a Portuguese pharma company thats looking to set up a new research center in the US.

Been is keeping the upfront under wraps, but disclosed that milestones would add up to $130 million.

All six staffers at LTI, including Been and CSO Peter Lansbury, have been retained to run the newly established BIAL Biotech.

Although the name has changed, the emphasis remains on the programs that LTI already has going, which are all driven by genetic targets.

The lead program, BIA 28-6156 or LTI-291, focuses on activating one enzyme thats lacking in Parkinsons disease patients with certain GBA mutations.

By normalizing enzyme activity you restore the lysosomal function in the cell, he said. With that you restore the glycosphingolipids lipid metabolism in the cells of the brain, which should lead to a disease modifying effect which hopefully translates into reducing the progression of the disease.

The plan for BIAL Biotech is to go straight into Phase II in the second half of 2021 once they nab an IND in the US (the early clinical work was done in the Netherlands), set up registries at clinical sites to identify the right patients and complete long-term tox work.

One of the ways the parent BIAL stood out from other pharma suitors, Been added, was that they agreed with this plan while others insisted on doing an extra study with a brain imaging agent.

While this marks BIALs first official US footprint, the Portuguese drugmaker also boasts of two out-licensed drugs available in the country: Neurocrines Ongentys, an add-on treatment to levodopa/carbidopa in patients with Parkinsons disease experiencing off episodes; and the partial seizures drug Aptiom now marketed by Sunovion.

But its keen to go deeper into Parkinsons by leveraging growing knowledge of genetic mutations to craft a targeted approach, Been said.

They want to become a leader or a major player in the field of Parkinsons disease focused on all these subsegments of Parkinsons disease, he said.

That could also mean partnering on geographies where BIAL, whose neurological portfolio is already available in Europe, isnt quite as active.

Co-founded by Henri Termeer and Bob Carpenter, LTI has accrued a stellar slate of investors over the years, including Hatteras Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, Lilly Ventures, Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures, Roche Venture Fund and Partners Innovation Fund.

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Its sale to Allergan was called off at the last minute. One year later, a biotech co-founded by Henri Termeer finds a new buyer - Endpoints News

New Institute To Study Behavioral Plasticity In Locusts – Texas A&M Today – Texas A&M University Today

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Locusts have a reputation of biblical proportions.

Certain species of grasshoppers that are typically solitary and harmless can suddenly swarm and consume entire crops, including plants that support livestock. Large swarms can destroy livelihoods for farmers and entire communities food supply.

That is why researchers fromTexas A&M AgriLife,Baylor College of Medicine,Arizona State University,Washington University in St. LouisandUniversity of California, Davis, have created the Behavioral Plasticity Research Institute (BPRI).

The institute will work to understand the mechanisms behind locust swarms and migration, and use this knowledge to develop effective methods to limit the destruction the swarms can leave behind.

The cross-institutional, multi-disciplinary effort is led byHojun Song, associate professor, and Spencer Behmer, professor, both in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life SciencesDepartment of Entomology;Fabrizio Gabbiani, professor of neuroscience, and Dr. Herman Dierick, associate professor of molecular and human genetics, Baylor; and Arianne Cease, associate professor of sustainability and director of the Global Locust Initiative at Arizona State University.

The team with wide-ranging expertise also includesGregory Sword, professor, Texas A&M Department of Entomology; Erez Lieberman, assistant professor, and Chenghang Zong, assistant professor, Baylor; Rick Overson, senior scientist, Arizona State; Stephen Richards, project scientist, Earth BioGenome Project, UC Davis; andBarani Raman, professor, Washington University.

A$12.5 million, five-year National Science Foundationgrant provides funding for the BPRI. The institute is one of four inaugural Biology Integration Institutes established by the NSF this year to work on broad problems in biology.

Using cutting-edge technologies in research projects spanning from molecules to landscapes, the BPRI will greatly enhance our understanding of how grasshoppers transform into locusts a phenomenon called locust phase polyphenism and develop innovative solutions to manage locust plagues, Gabbiani said. With a commitment to improving diversity, inclusion and equity, the institute will train the next generation of integrative biologists who can efficiently navigate across disciplines to reach this goal.

The institute will communicate groundbreaking research to the general public and the scientific community. By partnering with the Global Locust Initiative hosted at Arizona State, the institute plans to translate its scientific findings to real-world management with a goal of improving global food system sustainability.

Currently, when locusts outbreak, they can affect one in 10 people globally. The impact and the benefits to society that might come from this institute are pretty enormous.

The phenomenon BPRI will study, locust phase polyphenism, is a prime example of how distinct phenotypes can arise from environmental and other cues, rather than only genetic information. In the case of grasshopper species that are considered to be locusts, typically harmless insects can change their behavior in response to certain environmental and sensory cues to become a cohesive swarm.

The changes locusts undergo belong to a broad scientific concept known as phenotypic plasticity, the ability of organisms to change in response to their environment. Phenotypic plasticity is common in nature. But, to fully understand its mechanisms, maintenance and evolution, biological integration is needed, Song said. This work also illuminates how gene expression patterns and epigenetic regulation are linked to shifts in behavior, physiology and ecology that result in outbreaks, collective movement and mass migration.

So, the team expects this work to eventually lend itself to more than just insects. The information learned will help to understand how environment influences genetic makeup to shape behavior across all animals.

Currently, when locusts outbreak, they can affect one in 10 people globally, Behmer said. The impact and the benefits to society that might come from this institute are pretty enormous.

To better understand the scope of locusts impact, one must consider the situation of places affected by swarms, Sword said.

When we have disasters in developed countries, we have mechanisms in place to get people support and relief they need, Sword said. But in a country dependent on small-holder subsistence agricultural operations, a locust swarm can literally take away a familys entire source of income and food for the year.

To gain a fuller understanding of the problem and provide individualized solutions, the institute will involve people with diverse backgrounds.

Every step of the way, we will ask the question of whether we are being inclusive and hearing all the perspectives, Song said. We need to work across subdisciplines and try to get at the big picture rather than focusing on little slices. I believe that by bringing all these people together, within the next five or 10 years, we can make amazing changes.

Researchers with the BPRI plan to carry out 10 integrative research activities. The projects will use three locust and three non-swarming grasshopper species with varying degrees of plasticity. The researchers will work with genomes, tissue-specific and time-resolved transcriptomes and epigenomes, as well as CRISPR/Cas9 and reverse genetics tools to understand the functional genetics of locust phase polyphenism, all considered within an evolutionary framework.

Well be studying the factors that nudge individual locusts to join a larger group and the changes that follow, Raman said. Given the reports of massive, destructive locust swarms in many African and Asian countries this year, this is indeed a timely investigation of a well-reported, but not yet fully understood phenomenon.

In essence, the institute will aim to solve problems humans have faced for thousands of years due to locusts, Song said.

Weve had the locust problem for millennia, Song said. But, we still struggle to control these pests. I believe that the discoveries made through the BPRI will fundamentally transform our understanding of why and how locusts swarm, which will ultimately translate into sustainable management practices.

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New Institute To Study Behavioral Plasticity In Locusts - Texas A&M Today - Texas A&M University Today

Targeting the ERG Oncogene with Splice-Switching Oligonucleotides as a Novel Therapeutic Strategy in Prosta… – UroToday

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Prostate cancer is the second most commonly occurring cancer in men and the fourth most common cancer worldwide. Furthermore, prostate cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, thus representing a major health issue in the global community. The ERG oncogene, a member of the ETS family of transcription factor encoding genes, is a key regulator of cell proliferation, differentiation, angiogenesis, inflammation and apoptosis.1 ERG is not expressed in normal prostate tissue but is a genetic driver of prostate cancer where it is activated through a fusion with the androgen-responsive TMPRSS2 promoter. Importantly, this fusion is present in approximately 50% of cases, highlighting its importance as a potential therapeutic target. We have recently shown that ERG expression is increased in patients with advanced prostate cancer and that higher levels of ERG are associated with seminal vesicle invasion (stage T3b) and biochemical recurrence2 (prostate-specific antigen (PSA)only recurrence). However, targeting of these ETS transcription factors with small molecules has been challenging due to their lack of druggable active sites. As such, there is significant interest in developing novel therapeutic approaches and agents that could target ERG.

Here,3 we have taken a novel approach to target ERG at the gene level rather than at the protein level and to our knowledge, this is the first example demonstrating the promise of using splice-switching oligonucleotides (SSOs) to target ERG in prostate cancer. SSOs are an antisense technology that work by interfering with pre-mRNA splicing and can be used to cause skipping of specific disease-associated exons from the pre-mRNA. The fusion between ERG and TMPRSS2 most often occurs between TMPRSS2 exons 1 or 2 and exon 4 of ERG. We decided to cause skipping of ERG exon 4 (218bp in size) with SSOs resulting in a frame-shift and premature stop codon, leading to nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) of the transcript and thus reduced ERG protein levels (Fig.1).

Figure 1. Overview of the study

We designed a panel of SSOs and tested these in two ERG-positive cancer cell lines VCaPs (prostate cancer) and MG63s (osteosarcoma). In both lines we found that our SSOs caused skipping of exon 4 leading to reduced ERG protein levels (Fig.2, left panel). This in turn resulted in decreased cell proliferation, cell migration and significantly increased apoptosis in both VCaPs and MG63s (Fig.2, left panel). Furthermore, since ERG has been shown to drive Wnt/-catenin signalling in the context of prostate cancer, we analysed the levels of several Wnt pathway components as well as pathway activity with TopFlash assays and found that pathway activity was significantly reduced (Fig.2, left panel).

We next investigated the potential of our SSOs to affect tumour growth using in vivo xenograft models of prostate cancer. Here we found that our most potent SSO based on our in vitro work could reduce tumour growth when delivered systemically (Fig.2, middle panel) and when we analysed excised tumours, we found significant exon 4 skipping and reduced ERG protein levels (Fig.2, middle panel). Importantly our SSO had no apparent toxic effects and did not affect endogenous ERG levels in the mice, demonstrating strong specificity to human ERG. Finally, we tested our most-promising SSO in an ex vivo system using patient-derived tumour explants (Fig.2, right panel). In these assays we demonstrated that SSO treatment reduced ERG protein levels in cultured tumour explants resulting in increased expression of PTEN protein (Fig.2, right panel), which we have previously shown to be repressed by ERG in prostate cancer cells.4

Figure 2. Main findings of the study

Our promising study3 paves the way for larger future studies aimed at testing similarly designed SSOs with improved delivery chemistry in larger cohorts of mouse models of prostate cancer as well as additional ex vivo patient tumour-derived samples to demonstrate the translational potential of this therapeutic approach.

Written by:Sean Porazinski, Faculty of Medicine, St Vincent's Clinical School, University of NSW;The Kinghorn Cancer Centre, 384 Victoria St.Darlinghurst, Sydney, NSW, 2010, Australia and Michael Ladomery,Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.

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Targeting the ERG Oncogene with Splice-Switching Oligonucleotides as a Novel Therapeutic Strategy in Prosta... - UroToday

Cancer Vaccines: The Fourth Pillar of Anti-Cancer Therapy? – JD Supra

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[co-authors: Dan Meckley, Preston Tran, and Heather Hatcher, Ph.D.]

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Innovative technologies are being deployed to address the Western worlds major killer: cancer. Traditionally, cancer treatment has included surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, but recently, the development of targeted immunotherapies such as monoclonal antibodies and immune checkpoint inhibitors (e.g., PD-1, PD-L1 and CTLA-4 inhibitors) are showing considerable promise in immunooncology.

The fields of immunology and oncology have been linked since the late 19th century, when studies showed that killed and denatured bacteria injected into sites of sarcoma (a tumor that starts in the bone or muscle) resulted in tumor shrinkage. The intersection between immune surveillance and tumor biology has led to broad therapeutic advances, including the search for a cancer vaccine.

Traditional prophylactic vaccines work to prevent disease by preparing the bodys immune system against a pathogenic infection such as influenza or polio. Over the last decade, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved prophylactic vaccines that prevent development of cancer by protecting against cancer-causing pathogens such as human papillomavirus (HPV) (GARDASIL 9; Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Whitehouse Station, NJ) and hepatitis B virus (HEPLISAV-B; Dynavax Technologies Corp., Emeryville, CA).

A cancer vaccine is a therapeutic vaccine that targets pre-existing tumors in cancer patients who have a fundamentally different immune response relative to that of healthy individuals. Cancer is characterized by an accumulation of genetic alterations, and every tumor has its own unique composition of mutations and novel surface antigens, or neo-antigens, with only a small fraction shared between patients. Not surprisingly, therapeutic vaccines have been challenging to develop; however, tumor neo-antigens present an antigenic target for pharmaceutical companies to design and develop cancer vaccines.

Within the past several years, there has been an explosion in early-stage clinical activity in gene-modified and cell-based immunooncology, which now encompasses about 58% of Phase I trials. The FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) provided sponsors with guidance on Clinical Considerations for Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines (October 2011) to determine optimal dosing, potential biological and clinical activity, and safety profile during early phase clinical trials, as well as endpoint selection in late phase clinical trials to support a subsequent Biologics License Application (BLA) for marketing approval. Many trials have shown potent therapeutic responses in a proportion of patients with late stage cancer, but it has been rare for trials to obtain more than a 510% partial or complete response. However, this limited success has not lessened the enthusiasm for development of potential cancer vaccines. In 2019, there were nearly 700 oncology clinical trials utilizing specific regenerative medicine and advanced therapy technologies to treat leukemia, lymphoma, and cancers of the brain, breast, bladder, cervix, colon, esophagus, ovaries, pancreas and others (ARM 2019 Annual Report, https://alliancerm.org/sector-report/2019-annual-report/). The 2010 FDA approval of the first cancer vaccine (Provenge (sipuleucel-T); Dendreon Corp., Seattle, WA), was supported by clinical trials showing that the vaccine prolongs survival in patients with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer, though the effect was modest. In 2015, the FDA approved a therapeutic cancer vaccine for the treatment of advanced melanoma (IMLYGIC or T-VEC, talimogene laherparepvec; Amgen, Thousand Oaks, CA).

Despite the challenges, each translation of cancer vaccines to the clinical setting has yielded a deeper understanding of the immunologic response produced by cancer.

Several platforms for cancer vaccination are being tested, including peptides, proteins, antigen presenting cells, tumor cells, and viral vectors. Prior clinical trials have shown that cancer vaccines are well tolerated, target tumor neo-antigens and induce antigen cascade. Current trials seek to improve cancer vaccine efficacy either by targeting novel tumor antigens or employing vaccines in combination with other therapeutic approaches. Additionally, provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act have allowed the FDA to use an accelerated approval pathway for cancer vaccines that have been designated as regenerative medicine advanced therapy (RMAT).

Cancer vaccination comprises an array of approaches that seek to generate, amplify, or skew (or a combination thereof) antitumor immunity. Cancer immunotherapy may ultimately establish its position as the fourth pillar of anti-cancer therapy, complementing surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.

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Jupiter Orphan Therapeutics Announces US Patent for Its Resveratrol Formulation – PRNewswire

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JUPITER, Fla., Oct. 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Jupiter Orphan Therapeutics, Inc. announced today that its flagship JOTROLTM resveratrol delivery system has been granted patent No. 10780056 by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, in addition to its European patents, issued earlier this year.

The U.S. patent covers the suspension of active ingredient resveratrol and other compounds in a micellar emulsion that can be delivered via oral capsule. In this form, a daily dose of JOTROLTM can deliver the equivalent resveratrol dose of approximately 50 standard bottles of red wine, minus wine's alcohol, and its side-effects.

"This delivery platform allows resveratrol's potential as a treatment for neurodegenerative and other conditions to be fully analyzed and understood," said Christer Rosn, Chairman and CEO of Jupiter Orphan Therapeutics, Inc.

Initial data indicate the JOTROLTM formulation renders resveratrol more bioavailable in the blood and central nervous system. The formulation also appears to avoid some gastrointestinal issues seen in clinical resveratrol clinical studies.

The JOTROLTM formulation has been advanced by Jupiter Orphan Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage drug platform company headquartered in Jupiter, Florida that is focused on neurological and rare diseases, in partnership with Aquanova AG of Darmstadt, Germany, the patent holder. Scientists at the University of Miami, MIT and Georgetown University have also consulted on its development. Jupiter Orphan Therapeutics, Inc. holds the global rights to this intellectual property through an agreement with Aquanova AG.

Earlier this month, the National Institutes of Health awarded Jupiter Orphan Therapeutics $1.7 million to support a Phase I clinical study of JOTROLTM for treatment of early-stage Alzheimer's disease. JOTROLTM is also currently undergoing evaluation for the treatment of Friedreich's ataxia and mucopolysaccharidosis type-I, says Marshall Hayward, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Jupiter Orphan Therapeutics, and co-inventor of the approved patent.

Resveratrol is a plant compound with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Found in grape skins, red wine, peanuts, berries and other plants, many studies have shown its apparent benefits for improving markers of brain inflammation and oxidative stress. Studies have also shown it can improve the efficiency of cells' energy organelles, called mitochondria. Damage to mitochondria is seen in Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. Resveratrol also appears to have anti-aging properties similar to caloric-restriction-associated metabolism regulators called sirtuins.

Because it possesses such diverse mechanisms of action, it may have many eventual indications, Rosn said.

For more information about Jupiter Orphan Therapeutics and JOTROLTM, visit http://www.jupiterorphan.com.

Company contact: Christer Rosn, Chairman and CEO[emailprotected] +1 561 308-7780

SOURCE Jupiter Orphan Therapeutics, Inc.

http://www.jupiterorphan.com

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Global Resveratrol Market 2020 Comprehensive Research Methodology, Key Insights, Segments and Extensive Profiles by 2025 – Crypto Daily

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Global Resveratrol Market 2020 by Manufacturers, Type and Application, Forecast to 2025 released by MarketsandResearch.biz provides exclusive vital statistics on the market covering data, information, trends, and competitive landscape details. The report clarifies the value chain structure, industrial environment, market size, regional analysis, application, and forecast. The report monitors the key trends and market drivers in the current scenario. The research focuses on the leading players of the global Resveratrol market combined with various depending aspects related as well as their profiles are analyzed emphatically by landscape contrast. The report categorizes and examines the market by competitors, areas, product types and end-users, former data, and prediction data for 2020 to 2025 forecast time-period.

The report offers data with respect to a subjective and quantitative perspective of the general market. Overall data will assist the customer better understand the rivals. The measurable examination of the global Resveratrol market studies the supply, request, generation, support, and capacity of the item. It analyzes topmost prime manufacturers with information such as company profiles, gross, gross margin, capacity, product picture and specification, production, price, cost, revenue, and contact information. The report serves comprehensive insight into the key trends affecting the industry, as well as primary risks, opportunities that could design the global market.

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Primitive vendors included in the market are: DSM, Great Forest Biomedical, InterHealth, Evolva, JF-NATURAL, Sabinsa, Chengdu Yazhong, Laurus Labs, Maypro, Shaanxi Ciyuan Biotech, Changsha Huir Biological-tech, Xian Gaoyuan Bio-Chem, Xian Sinuote

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Moreover, the report comprises analytical data on inventory levels, consumer demand, sales, and supply chain movement as they are important in the process of marketing, and making procurement decisions. You will find information about technology, R&D pursuits, together with brand new product launches out of the global Resveratrol market.

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This report can be customized to meet the clients requirements. Please connect with our sales team ([emailprotected]), who will ensure that you get a report that suits your needs. You can also get in touch with our executives on +1-201-465-4211 to share your research requirements.

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Global Resveratrol Market 2020 Comprehensive Research Methodology, Key Insights, Segments and Extensive Profiles by 2025 - Crypto Daily

October 2020 SmartPak SmartTip of the Month: Senior SmartSupplements – Horse Illustrated

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Photo Courtesy SmartPak

Whether youve been partners for years or youre both turning a new page together, you want to give your senior horse the care and support he deserves. Horses are living longer and longer, so caring for seniors brings some special considerations. One of those considerations is winter weather, and as the seasons begin to shift from warmer to colder months, there are ways to help support your senior with the right preparation and care.

Once you have discussed your horses health with your vet, there are other things you can do to support him. First, help your senior start winter off right by making sure hes at a healthy weight this fall. Experts recommend that senior horses get two physical exams each year, so your horses fall physical is a great time to ask your veterinarian to show you how to evaluate his body condition. Once you know his body condition score, consider whether you need to make any adjustments to his diet now.

Next, its important to monitor your senior horses teeth all year round, but it is especially critical during winter. If your horse cant chew properly, hes not going to receive the full benefit of the food youre providing. Every horse needs an annual dental exam, and seniors may need one twice a year. Schedule a dental exam with your vet to ensure that your horses teeth are in top shape before winter arrives.

In addition to general care, many senior horses may benefit from the daily, ongoing support that supplements provide, especially during the winter months. Key areas to supportsuch as weight, joint, and immune healthare important to consider for your senior.

SmartPak is pleased to offer a variety of formulas designed with the senior horses health in mind. Weve formulated top-rated joint support with tried-and-true ingredients, like glucosamine and innovative support from turmeric and resveratrol. Weve also designed supplements specifically with your horses weight and pituitary health in mind. However, if youre looking for multiple areas of support all in one convenient supplement, weve got you and your horse covered with the SmartPak SmartCombo Senior line.

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October 2020 SmartPak SmartTip of the Month: Senior SmartSupplements - Horse Illustrated

Alt-right | Definition of Alt-right by Merriam-Webster

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variants: or less commonly alt right

: a right-wing, primarily online political movement or grouping based in the U.S. whose members reject mainstream conservative politics and espouse extremist beliefs and policies typically centered on ideas of white nationalism Welcome to the alt-right. The label blends together straight-up white supremacists, nationalists who think conservatives have sold out to globalization, and nativists who fear immigration will spur civil disarray. Dylan Matthews Rather than concede the moral high ground to the left, the alt right turns the left's moralism on its head and makes it a badge of honor to be called "racist," "homophobic," and "sexist." Benjamin Welton Regardless of who triumphs at the ballot box, the biggest winner of this presidential election may be the alt-right: a sprawling coalition of reactionary conservatives who have lobbied to make the United States more "traditional," more "populist" and more white. Jonathon Morgan often used before another nounan alt-right manifestoSecularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay marriage and pot legalization. But it's also making America's partisan clashes more brutal. And it has contributed to the rise of the so-called alt-right movement, whose members see themselves as proponents of white nationalism. Peter Beinart

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Alt-right | Definition of Alt-right by Merriam-Webster

AltRight.net The Official Introduction To The Alt Right

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Welcome to the Alt Right These are our core values:

1) We believe that every race is important and should be preserved. This includes whites. We believe that each race needs a homeland, a place to call their own, that is exclusively theirs. A place to keep their traditions alive, honor their ancestors, and pass on the torch to future generations. Japan for the Japanese, Africa for the Africans, Israel for the Jews, and Europe for native white Europeans. People naturally migrate to live with their own, to force integration on a large scale is a recipe for strife and conflict.

2) We believe in the value of the nuclear family and high investment parenting. One of the most fundamental reasons why western cultures have been more successful than other cultures is that children are raised by a mother and a father, not by a tribe. The best results come when a kid is exposed to both male and female influences. Single parenting and same sex couples deprive kids of this important influence in the same way letting a daycare raise a child for the bulk of their young developmental lives.

3) We are fundamentally against the idea of a multicultural society. It is ironic that the idea of multiculturalism destroys the diversity that multiculturalists seek to protect. If we are forced to abandon our own traditions to celebrate anothers, then an important part of what made us who we are will be lost in time. In that vein, races and cultures should be encouraged to intermingle and interact, but should celebrate and preserve the traditions of their own tribe over others.

4) We believe in traditional family values and gender roles. Girls should be encouraged to be girls and boys should be encouraged to be boys. The genders are not the same and to say that they are ignoring reality. Though males and females are fundamentally different, they compliment each other in a way that is irreproducible when traditional gender roles are abandoned. Children should be encouraged to pursue whatever they are passionate about, even if its outside of their gender role. To suggest that a girl is a lesser person, however, because she doesnt want to pursue a career but instead wants to nurture and raise a family creates an identity crisis that goes against hundreds of thousands of years of biology. To suggest that a first grade boy needs to consider what gender pronoun they want to use is criminal.

5) We believe that equality should mean equality. Concepts like affirmative action are nothing but thinly masked racism. True equality means taking race and gender off of college admission applications, not favoring minority or woman owned businesses, or chastising a business because its workforce isnt diverse enough. Real equality is judging people on their merits alone, admitting the student that put in the extra effort to get a high GPA or hiring the most qualified candidate for the job without considering race, gender, or other factors.

6) We believe in closed borders. To allow illegal aliens into a country, to support them, to provide them with free benefits and welfare is not only an unnecessary and unsustainable burden on society, its also a slap in the face to all of the immigrants who went to the tremendous time and effort to immigrate legally. Illegal immigrants in any country are breaking the law and should be deported as soon as they are discovered. If they want to come back, they are welcome to apply and follow the rules of the society they want to join just like everyone else who made the effort to legally enter a country has done.

7) We believe that there are differences between the races, and that those differences are a good thing. Despite what society tells us, everyone is not the same and races exhibit broad and quantifiable trends, both culturally as well as in basic metrics like IQ, athletic ability, propensity to violence, and creative talents. To deny this is to deny both hundreds of years of academic research as well as millennia of historical trends. To think that our society has advanced so much in the last 100 years that we can all hold hands and be the same is lunacy. Theres a reason that Indians still run the corner stores, blacks are still in the ghettos, Jews infiltrate the banks and media, and whites are still turning out classic art and literature that will inspire for generations.

8) We believe in the value of hard work, competition, and good character. Life does not hand out participation trophies and everyone is not a winner. Children should be raised in a truly competitive environment, not one with padded corners and tests that cater to the lowest common denominator. Values like trustworthiness, thriftiness, honesty, charity, and making decisions that benefit ones family and community should be instilled and encouraged in a society. When you raise a kid to walk on eggshells, be worried that they might offend or trigger someone, and think that as long as they show up theyll be a winner, you shouldnt be surprised when they grow up to be a pushover who doesnt take responsibility for their own actions, someone who demands handouts instead of mucking in to get the job done and earn what they need.

9) We believe in a non-interventionist foreign policy. We have enough issues in our own country, from poverty to declining economies, from a deteriorating public infrastructure and an education system that is rapidly falling behind almost every other first world country, it is clear that we have plenty to fix at home. To think that it is appropriate to exert our way of life and our system on government on cultures that are radically different is pure hubris. Maintain strong alliances with historical partners based on shared interests and mutual defense, but let each nation forge their own path even, and especially, those who are so far culturally removed from us as to seem alien or barbaric. This is the true way to preserve diversity.

10) We believe in free speech. Often the most important speech are the viewpoints that others find disagreeable, controversial, or offensive. The right to ones own opinions is fundamental and inalienable. Growth, both personally and as a society is most rapidly achieved when the status quo is constantly challenged and forced to prove itself. To censor speech that goes against the grain or that some may find offensive stalls the advancement of a society and the evolution away from ideas that are contrary to the greater good.

contact: altright-at-protonmail.com

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AltRight.net The Official Introduction To The Alt Right

Alt-Right | Southern Poverty Law Center

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The Alternative Right is characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes. Alt-righters eschew establishment conservatism, skew young, and embrace whiteethnonationalismas a fundamental value.

Martin Luther King Jr., a fraud and degenerate in his life, has become the symbol and cynosure of White Dispossession and the deconstruction of Occidental civilization. We must overcome!National Policy Institute column, January 2014

Immigration is a kind of proxy warand maybe a last standfor White Americans, who are undergoing a painful recognition that, unless dramatic action is taken, their grandchildren will live in a country that is alien and hostile.National Policy Institute column, February 2014

Since we are fighting for nothing less than the biological survival of our race, and since the vast bulk of Jews oppose us, we need to err on the side of caution and have no association with Jews whatsoever. Any genuine Jewish well-wishers will understand, since they know what their people are like better than we ever can. Saving our race is something that we will have to do ourselves alone.Greg Johnson, White Nationalism & Jewish Nationalism, August 2011

I oppose the Jewish diaspora in the United States and other white societies. I would like to see the white peoples of the world break the power of the Jewish diaspora and send the Jews to Israel, where they will have to learn how to be a normal nation.Greg Johnson, White Nationalism & Jewish Nationalism, August 2011

At the core of the JI [Jewish Identity] is a malevolent supremacy. This is the manifest in their rejection of outgroups who wish to participate and innovate traditional Jewish cultural activities. Why reject diversity and progress within your community if not a false feeling of betterness? The root of this problem is, of course, a sexual feeling of inferiority. Mighty psychosexual urges must not be downplayed within group dynamics. As a remedy to this, the JI must be infiltrated with foreign members to procreate with their men and women. That way, the deep psychological psychosis can be treated at the root.A Critical Analysis of the Jewish Identity, The Right Stuff, January 2016

The new left doctrine of racial struggle in favor of non-Whites only, a product of decolonization and the defeat of nationalists by egalitarians after WWII, must be repudiated and Whites must be allowed to take their own side in their affairs. A value system that says Whites are not allowed to have collective interests while literally every other identity group can do so and ought to do so is unacceptable.The Fight for the Alt Right: The Rising Tide of Ideological Autism Against Big-Tent Supremacy, The Right Stuff, January 2016

This is our home and our kith and kin. Borders matter, identity matters, blood matters, libertarians and their capitalism can move to Somalia if they want to live without rules, in the West we must have standards and enforce them. The freedom for other races to move freely into white nations is nonexistent. Stay in your own nations, we dont want you here.Matthew Heimbach, I Hate Freedom, Traditionalist Youth Network, July 7, 2013

Those who promote miscegenation, usury, or any other forms of racial suicide should be sent to re-education centers, not tolerated.Matthew Heimbach, I Hate Freedom, Traditionalist Youth Network, July 7, 2013

The Alternative Right is a term coined in 2008 by Richard Bertrand Spencer, who heads the white nationalist think tank known as the National Policy Institute, to describe a loose set of far-right ideals centered on white identity and the preservation of Western civilization. In 2010, Spencer who had stints as an editor of The American Conservative and Takis Magazine launched the Alternative Right blog, where he worked to refine the movements ideological tenets.

Racist alt-right celebrity Richard Spencer was slated to speak at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Spencer describes the alt-right as a big-tent ideology that blends the ideas of neo-reactionaries (NRx-ers), who advocate a return to an antiquated, pseudo-libertarian government that supports traditional western civilization; archeofuturists, those who advocate for a return to traditional values without jettisoning the advances of society and technology; human biodiversity adherents (HBDers) and race realists, people who generally adhere to scientific racism; and other extreme-right ideologies. Alt-right adherents stridently reject egalitarianism and universalism.

At the heart of the alt-right is a break with establishment conservatism that favors experimentation with the ideas of the French New Right; libertarian thought as exemplified by former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas); anarcho-capitalism, which advocates individual sovereignty and open markets in place of an organized state; Catholic traditionalism, which seeks a return to Roman Catholicism before the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council; and other ideologies.

It is a reaction to the conservative establishment as exemplified by the nomination of Barry Goldwater for the presidency in 1964. According to Spencer, that solidified several aspects of contemporary conservatism, including an emphasis on liberty, freedom, free markets and capitalism. Spencer considers these ideas to be anti-ideals and says the alt-right is redefining categories for a new kind of conservative.

Spencer describes alt-right adherents as younger people, often recent college graduates, who recognize the uselessness of mainstream conservatism in what he describes as a hyper-racialized world. So, its no surprise that the movement in 2015 and 2016 concentrated on opposing immigration and the resettlement of Syrian refugees in America. Although such stances align with older forms of white racism, Spencer insists that the alt-right is a liberation from a left-right dialectic.

The alt-right is intimately connected with American Identitarianism, a version of an ideology popular in Europe that emphasizes cultural and racial homogeneity within different countries. One difference is that while European Identitarians indict the generation known as the 68ers, a reference to the left of the 1960s, their American counterparts attack baby boomers, who are presumed to comprise the bulk of the current Republican Partys base. But the movements on both continents are similar in accusing older conservatives for selling out their countries to foreigners.

Spencer left his Alternative Right blog on Christmas Day 2013 in order to focus on the Radix Journal, an online journal published by the National Policy Institute that promotes the creation of a white ethno-state. Spencers abrupt departure, referred to as the Christmas Day Purge, left the blog to two fellow white nationalists, Colin Liddell of the United Kingdom and Andy Nowicki, a former college professor. The blog has struggled since then to stay relevant to the white nationalist movement.

Matthew Heimbach, co-founder of the Traditionalist Youth Network, was slated to speak at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Although Spencer has positioned himself as the effective leader of the alt-right, other proponents include several well-known names on the far right, including Jared Taylor, editor of the American Renaissance racist journal; Greg Johnson of the publishing house Counter-Currents; Matthew Parrott and Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Youth Network; and Mike "Enoch" Peinovich, who runs The Right Stuff blog. But the general population of the alt-rightis composed, by and large, of anonymous youths who were exposed to the movements ideas through online message boards like 4chan and 8chans /pol/ and Internet platforms like Reddit and Twitter.

The movement is not monolithic. The diversity of far-right ideologies that it includes has resulted in some disagreement with regard to Jews, and whether to blame them for the perceived plight of white culturea belief that has undergirded many sectors of white nationalism for decades. While some alt-right leaders are unquestionably anti-Semitic, others, like Jared Taylor, are not, seeing Jews simply as white people. For his part, Spencer has repeatedly brought in anti-Semites to speak at his events.

In March 2016, for instance, Spencer invited former California State University-Long Beach professor Kevin MacDonald, the author of a trilogy purporting to show that Jews seek to undermine the host Christian societies in which they often live, to speak at an event titled Identity Politics. After the event, Spencer stopped just short of questioning the Holocaust, telling a Huffington Post reporter that if it really happened, then of course it wasnt justified. If it happened differently than what the story weve been told [is], then I think that needs to be let out.

Social media have been instrumental to the growth of the alt-right. Legions of anonymous Twitter users have used the hashtag #AltRight to proliferate their ideas, sometimes successfully pushing them into the political mainstream.

The best example of that is probably the term c---servative a combination of cuckold and conservative, coined to castigate Republican politicians who are seen as traitors to their people who are selling out conservatives with their support for globalism and certain liberal ideas. The phrase has a racist undertone, as some of its backers have suggested, implying that establishment conservatives are like white men who allow black men to sleep with their wives. It received widespread media attention, including, to the delight of Spencer and others, in The Washington Post.

But the alt-right has taken on many more issues than that, including issues of high importance to white nationalists like the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S. and Europe in 2015 and 2016, the Black Lives Matter movement and immigration reform. Propaganda campaigns also have been organized around hashtags such as #WhiteGenocide, a reference to the myth that white people are being subjected to an orchestrated eradication campaign; #ISaluteWhitePeople; #BoycottStarWarsVII, a racist campaign to protest the black actor who was cast in a lead role in the 2015 Star Wars reboot; and #NROrevolt, which arose after the National Review, a journal that has historically served as the gatekeeper to mainstream conservatism and has vehemently opposed Donald Trumps candidacy for president.

Trump is a hero to the alt-right. Through a series of semi-organized campaigns, alt-right activists applied the c---servative slur to every major Republican primary candidate except Trump, who regularly rails against political correctness, Muslims, immigrants, Mexicans, Chinese and others. They have also worked hard to affix the alt-right brand to Trump through the use of hashtags and memes.

The movement is not limited to the Internet. At least twice a year, Spencer reserves the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., for a coat-and-tie gathering of his followers. The events are open to reporters but also cloaked in secrecy attendees regularly use false names or refuse to identify themselves for fear of being labeled as racists. Topics and themes vary. The gathering in March 2015 was titled Beyond Conservatism and capitalized on the strength of the c---servative meme.

Identity Politics in March 2016 focused heavily on the continued success of Trumps presidential campaign. Each of the speakers featured there addressed a different facet of Trumps influence of politics and American culture. Kevin MacDonald classified Trumps rise as part of an implicit white backlash against present-day politics, while Spencer declared that Trump was merely creating a political space, intentionally or not, in which the alt-right could grow.

The alt-right also has a stable of publishing houses. Most notably, both NPI and Counter-Currents have publishing arms NPIs is Washington Summit Press that focus on historical and contemporary extremists. They distribute the works of such well-known white nationalist writers as Alexander Dugin, Corneliu Codreanu, Guillaume Faye and Alain de Benoist, along with more contemporary authors like F. Roger Devlin, Andy Nowicki, Greg Johnson and Richard Spencer.

Milo Yiannopoulos speaking at UC Santa Barbara, May 2016

In March 2016, Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos wrote an article for the right-wing Breitbart news site that claimed that the alt-right was fundamentally about youthful provocation and subversion, rather than simply another vehicle for the worst dregs of human society: anti-Semites, white supremacists, and other members of the Stormfront set, a reference to an online forum run by a former Alabama Klan leader. Yiannopoulos, who was instrumental in the online harassment campaign against women in the electronic gaming world known as Gamergate, was not well received. Virtually every mainstream conservative publication, from the National Review to The Federalist, condemned it. And some on the furthest extremes of the alt-right attacked him as a Jewish homosexual, in the words of Andrew Anglin, who runs the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, which Anglin describes as The Worlds Most Visited Alt Right Web Site. Anglin said Yiannopoulos had a history of engaging in sneaky Jewish tricks and added that this is how they get you. Clearly, the man seeks to undermine right-wing movements for Jewish purposes.

That last attack, which came despite the fact that Yiannopoulos has been photographed wearing a necklace with the German Iron Cross symbol, illustrates the diversity of opinion within the alt-right world. But, at the end of the day, neo-Nazis like Anglin, coat-and-tie racists like Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor, and oddball figures like Yiannopoulos have more in common, in terms of sharing a vision of society as fundamentally determined by race, than they disagree about.

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Alt-Right | Southern Poverty Law Center