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On this Live Greatly podcast episode, Kristel Bauer sits down with "Courage Catalyst" Dr. Margie Warrell, six-time bestselling author of The Courage Gap. Kristel and Margie discuss how to navigate being an insecure overachiever and how to build courage. Tune in now! Key Takeaways From This Episode: A look into being an insecure overachiever and how to overcome it Tips to build courage within ourselves A look into Dr. Warrell's book, The Courage Gap ABOUT DR. MARGIE WARRELL Dr. Margie Warrell is a six-time bestselling author, leadership advisor, keynote speaker, and "courage catalyst" bringing deep insight into human and organizational behavior to foster braver leadership and better outcomes. Dr. Warrell has gained profound insights on managing fear, navigating risk, and embracing change since her childhood in rural Australia. Thirty years of living and working around the world—from Papua, New Guinea to Singapore—have provided her with a globally grounded perspective on navigating risk and overcoming the barriers that stifle potential in individuals and organizations. Drawing on her doctoral research and experience in coaching and Fortune 500 consulting, Dr. Warrell is a trusted advisor across private and public sectors, helping to embolden braver leadership and cultivate forward-thinking "cultures of courage" that counter change resistance, foster learning, and accelerate growth. Organizations such as NASA, Dell, Morgan Stanley, SAP, Novartis, the UN Foundation, HP, Google, and Johnson & Johnson have sought her expertise. Author of the new book, The Courage Gap, Dr. Warrell is renowned for her ability to bridge the "head and heart" as a writer and speaker. She has also co-authored two other books with Stephen Covey, Ken Blanchard, and Jack Canfield. Her interviews with leaders and luminaries—including Bill Marriott, Richard Branson, and Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School—inform her thought leadership, which she shares through her global top 1.5% podcast, Live Brave, Forbes column, and leading media outlets such as CNN, Bloomberg, and the WSJ. Dr. Warrell's commitment to "braver leadership for a better world" extends to advising US Congressional Chiefs, McCain Global Fellows, and emerging female leaders in burgeoning democracies. A passionate advocate for women in leadership, she has served on numerous government roundtables, co-led Korn Ferry's Power of All initiative to advance more women to C-suite and board tables, and been Senior Partner in their CEO & Leadership Institute. Connect with Dr. Warrell Order Dr. Warrell's book: https://a.co/d/81cuf2F Website: https://margiewarrell.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margiewarrell/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/margiewarrell/ About the Host of the Live Greatly podcast, Kristel Bauer: Kristel Bauer is a corporate wellness and performance expert, keynote speaker and TEDx speaker supporting organizations and individuals on their journeys for more happiness and success. She is the author of Work-Life Tango: Finding Happiness, Harmony, and Peak Performance Wherever You Work (John Murray Business November 19, 2024). With Kristel's healthcare background, she provides data driven actionable strategies to leverage happiness and high-power habits to drive growth mindsets, peak performance, profitability, well-being and a culture of excellence. Kristel's keynotes provide insights to "Live Greatly" while promoting leadership development and team building. Kristel is the creator and host of her global top self-improvement podcast, Live Greatly. She is a contributing writer for Entrepreneur, and she is an influencer in the business and wellness space having been recognized as a Top 10 Social Media Influencer of 2021 in Forbes. As an Integrative Medicine Fellow & Physician Assistant having practiced clinically in Integrative Psychiatry, Kristel has a unique perspective into attaining a mindset for more happiness and success. Kristel has presented to groups from the American Gas Association, Bank of America, bp, Commercial Metals Company, General Mills, Northwestern University, Santander Bank and many more. Kristel has been featured in Forbes, Forest & Bluff Magazine, Authority Magazine & Podcast Magazine and she has appeared on ABC 7 Chicago, WGN Daytime Chicago, Fox 4's WDAF-TV's Great Day KC, and Ticker News. Kristel lives in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area and she can be booked for speaking engagements worldwide. To Book Kristel as a speaker for your next event, click here. Website: www.livegreatly.co Follow Kristel Bauer on: Instagram: @livegreatly_co LinkedIn: Kristel Bauer Twitter: @livegreatly_co Facebook: @livegreatly.co Youtube: Live Greatly, Kristel Bauer To Watch Kristel Bauer's TEDx talk of Redefining Work/Life Balance in a COVID-19 World click here. Click HERE to check out Kristel's corporate wellness and leadership blog Click HERE to check out Kristel's Travel and Wellness Blog Disclaimer: The contents of this podcast are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician for any recommendations specific to you or for any questions regarding your specific health, your sleep patterns changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions. Always consult your physician before starting any supplements or new lifestyle programs. All information, views and statements shared on the Live Greatly podcast are purely the opinions of the authors, and are not medical advice or treatment recommendations. They have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration. Opinions of guests are their own and Kristel Bauer & this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. Neither Kristel Bauer nor this podcast takes responsibility for possible health consequences of a person or persons following the information in this educational content. Always consult your physician for recommendations specific to you.
Shefali Kakar, Global Head of PK Sciences and Oncology at Novartis, returns to the AI in Business podcast to discuss how AI is reshaping the earliest and most critical phases of drug development—where strategic investment decisions are made long before a clinical trial begins. Together with Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello, Shefali explores how advanced modeling, in silico design, and patient data are creating a clearer picture of risk and return across R&D portfolios. She explains how pharmaceutical organizations are leveraging multi-factorial models to simulate safety, efficacy, and market potential—down to the molecular level. Want to share your AI adoption story with executive peers? Click emerj.com/expert2 for more information and to be a potential future guest on the 'AI in Business' podcast!
Audio roundup of selected biopharma industry content from Scrip over the business week ended December 5, 2025. In this episode: Trump's UK drug pricing win; Novo explains semaglutide Alzheimer's rationale; J&J and Novartis on this year's biggest M&A deals; a look at the mixed performance of CAR-Ts; and Akeso's goals beyond ivonescimab. Story links: https://insights.citeline.com/scrip/podcasts/scrips-five-must-know-things/quick-listen-scrips-five-must-know-things-UZSVLBBSQRAKNJC7GDZWILMAT4/ This episode was produced with the help of AI text-to-voice and voice emulation tools. Playlist: soundcloud.com/citelinesounds/sets/scrips-five-must-know-things
S6, EP 198Meet Your Actor Series - GM HakimMeet GM! GM Hakim (He/Him) is an award-nominated, full-time voice actor who does voice over work in eLearning, audiobooks, animation, audio guides, documentaries and docuseries, video games, audio dramas, corporate narration, explainers, promos, and more. GM's happy clients include Meta, Spotify, Hellmann's, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, JPMorganChase, Marvel Snap, Novartis, EF (Education First), Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, The U.S. Federal Highway Administration, and The American Council of Life Insurers. GM works from his professional home studio just outside of Boston. He studied broadcast and print journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, where he had a weekly radio show on WAER-FM for three years. He taught middle school English, theater, and improv from 2005-2023, mostly in Montessori schools. When he's not working in voiceover, you can find him writing, playing board games, playing guitar, leading Dungeons & Dragons games as a Dungeon Master, riding his bike, reading, cooking, playing ultimate Frisbee, and spending time with his wife and daughter.GM Website - https://www.gmhakim.com/Hi thx for listening in on the Creative Chaos conversation! Text us your thoughts on pieces of this conversation that inspired you or was relatable in your creative journey! Support the showThis is a shareable podcast, with a group of creatives, documenting their creative voice over & on-camera journeys to inspire all of us as we navigate our own paths! This pod may bring some amazing moments of inspiration, ah-ha break throughs or a feeling you're not the only one...but it is for entertainment and not educational purposes! Enjoy and thank you for listening to our Creative Chaos! *Have a creative story or journey to share, we'd love to hear it - email us at chaoskeepers411@gmail.com or jozlynrocki@gmail.com Follow all the Chaos - Website - https://www.keepingupwithchaos.net/ FB - https://www.facebook.com/keepingupwithchaospodcastIG - https://www.instagram.com/keeping_up_with_chaos/
Dr. Monty Pal and Dr. Jason Westin discuss the federal funding climate for cancer research and the persistent problem of drug shortages, two of the major concerns facing the oncology community in 2026. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Monty Pal: Hello and welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Monty Pal. I am a medical oncologist and vice chair of academic affairs at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles. There are always multiple challenges facing oncologists, and today, we discuss two of them that really stand out for 2026: threats to federal funding for cancer research and the persistent problem of drug shortages. I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Jason Westin, who believes that one way to meet these challenges is to get oncologists more involved in advocacy, and he will share some strategies to help us meet this moment in oncology. Dr. Westin is a professor in the Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, but he actually wears a lot of hats within ASCO. He is a member of the Board of Directors and has also previously served as chair of ASCO's Government Relations Committee. And he is also one of the inaugural members of ASCO's Political Action Committee, or PAC. He has testified before Congress about drug shortages and many other issues. Dr. Westin, I am really excited to have you on the podcast today and dive into some of these elements that will really impact our community in 2026. Thanks so much for joining us today. Dr. Jason Westin: Thank you for having me. Dr. Monty Pal: You've had such a range of experience. I already alluded to you testifying before Congress. You've actually run for office before. You wear so many different hats. I'm used to checking my PubMed every other day and seeing a new paper out from you and your group, and you publish in the New England Journal [of Medicine] on practice-setting standards and the diseases that you treat. But you've also done all this work in the domain of advocacy. I can't imagine that balancing that is easy. What has sort of motivated you on the advocacy front? Dr. Jason Westin: Advocacy to me is another way to apply our skills and help more people than just those that you're sitting across from at the time. Clinical research, of course, is a tool to try and take what we know and apply it more broadly to people that you'll never meet. And advocacy, I think, can do the same thing, where you can have a conversation with a lawmaker, you can advocate for a position, and that hopefully will help thousands or maybe even more people down the road who you'd never get to directly interact with. And so, I think it's a force multiplier in the same way that research can be. And so, I think advocacy is a wonderful part of how doctors care for our patients. And it's something that is often difficult to know where to start, but once people get into advocacy, they can see that the power, the rewarding nature of it is attractive, and most people, once they get going, continue with that through the rest of their career. Dr. Monty Pal: So, I'll ask you to expand on that a little bit. We have a lot of our younger ASCO members listening to this podcast, folks that are just starting out their careers in clinical practice or academia. Where does that journey begin? How do you get to the point that you're testifying in front of Congress and taking on these bigger sort of stances for the oncology community? Dr. Jason Westin: Yeah, with anything in medicine and in our careers, you have to start somewhere. And often you start with baby steps before you get in front of a panel of senators or other high-profile engagement opportunities. But often the first setting for junior colleagues to be engaged is doing things – we call them "Hill Days" – but basically being involved in kind of low-stakes meetings where you're with a group of peers, some of whom have done this multiple times before, and can get engaged talking to members of representatives' offices, and doing so in a way where it's a natural conversation that you're telling a story about a patient in your clinic, or that you're telling a personal experience from a policy that impacted your ability to deliver optimal care. It sounds stressful, but once you're doing it, it's not stressful. It's actually kind of fun. And it's a way that you can get comfort and skill with a group of peers who are there and able to help you. And ASCO has a number of ways to do that, both at the federal level, there's the Hill Day where we each April have several hundred ASCO members travel to Capitol Hill. There's also state engagement that can be done, so-called visiting at home, when representatives from the U.S. Congress or from state legislators are back in district. You can meet with your own representatives on behalf of yourself, on behalf of your organization, and advocate for policies in a way that can be beneficial to your patients. But those initial meetings that are in the office often they're low stakes because you could be meeting not with the representative but with their staff. And that staff sometimes is as young or even younger than our junior colleagues. These sometimes can be people in their 20s, but they're often extremely knowledgeable, extremely approachable, and are used to dealing with people who are new to advocacy. But they actually help make decisions within the office. So it's not a waste of time. It's actually a super useful way to engage. So, it's that first step of anything in life. The activation energy is always high to do something new. But I'd encourage people who are listening to this podcast already having some level of interest about it to explore ways that they could engage more. Dr. Monty Pal: You know, I have to tell you, I'm going to riff on what you just said for a second. ASCO couldn't make it any easier, I think, for folks to participate and get involved. So, if you're listening to this and scratching your head and thinking, "Well, where do I begin? How do I actually sign on for that meeting with a local representative?" Go to the ASCO ACT Network website. And I'll actually talk to our producer, Geraldine, to make sure we've got a link to that somewhere associated with this podcast after it's published, Jason, but I actually keep that on my browser and it's super easy. I check in there every now and then and see if there's any new policy or legislation that ASCO, you know, is sort of taking a stance on, and it gives me some fodder for conversation with my local representatives too. I mean, it's just an awesome, awesome vehicle. I'm going to segue right from there right to the issues. So, you and I are both at academic centers. You know, I think this is something that really pervades academia and enters into implications for general clinical practice. There's been this, you know, massive sort of proposal for decreased funding to the NCI and to the NIH and so forth. Tell us what ASCO is doing in that regard, and tell us perhaps how our community can help. Dr. Jason Westin: We live in interesting times, and I think that may be an understatement x 100. But obviously investments in research are things that when you're at an academic center, you see and feel that as part of your daily life. Members of Congress need to be reminded of that because there's a lot of other competing interests out there besides investing in the future through research. And being an elected representative is a hard job. That is something where you have to make difficult choices to support this, and that may mean not supporting that. And there's lots of good things where our tax dollars could be spent. And so, I'm sympathetic to the idea that there's not unlimited resources. However, ASCO has done an excellent job, and ASCO members have led the charge on this, of stating what research does, what is the benefit of research, and therefore why should this matter to elected representatives, to their staff, and to those people that they're elected to serve. And ASCO has led with a targeted campaign to basically have that message be conveyed at every opportunity to elected representatives. And each year on Hill Day, one of the asks that we have is to continue to support research: the NCI, NIH, ARPA-H, these are things that are always in the asks to make sure that there's appropriate funding. But effectively playing offense by saying, "It's not just a number on a sheet of paper, this is what it means to patients. This is what it means to potentially your loved ones in the future if you are in the opposite situation where you're not on the legislative side, but you're in the office receiving a diagnosis or receiving a difficult piece of news." We only have the tools we have now because of research, and each breakthrough has been years in the making and countless hours spent funded through the engine of innovation: clinical research and translational research. And so ASCO continues to beat that drum. You mentioned earlier the ACT Network. Just to bring that back again is a very useful, very easy tool to communicate to your elected representatives. When you sign up on the ASCO ACT website, you get emails periodically, not too much, but periodically get emails of, "This is a way you can engage with your lawmakers to speak up for this." And as you said, Monty, they make it as easy as possible. You click the button, you type in your address so that it figures out who your elected representatives are, and then it will send a letter on your behalf after like five clicks to say, "I want you to support research. I want you to vote for this particular thing which is of interest to ASCO and by definition to members of ASCO." And so the ACT Network is a way that people listening can engage without having to spend hours and significant time, but just a few clicks can send that letter to a representative in Congress. And the question could be: does that matter? Does contacting your senator or your elected representative do anything? If all they're hearing is somebody else making a different argument and they're hearing over and over again from people that want investments in AI or investments in something else besides cancer research, whatever it is, they may think that there's a ground shift that people want dollars to be spent over here as opposed to at the NIH or NCI or in federally funded research. It is important to continue to express the need for federal funding for our research. And so, it really is important for folks to engage. Dr. Monty Pal: 100%. One of the things that I think is not often obvious to a lot of our listeners is where the support for clinical trials comes from. You know, you've obviously run the whole gamut of studies as have I. You know, we have our pharmaceutical company-sponsored studies, which are in a particular bucket. But I would say that there's a very important and critical subset of studies that are actually government funded, right? NCI-funded clinical trials. If you don't mind, just explain to our audience the critical nature of the work that's being done in those types of studies and if you can, maybe compare and contrast the studies that are done in that bucket versus perhaps the pharmaceutical bucket. Dr. Jason Westin: Both are critical, and we're privileged that we have pharma studies that are sponsored and federally funded clinical research. And I think that part of a healthy ecosystem for us to develop new breakthroughs has a need for both. The pharma sponsored studies are done through the lens of trying to get an approval for an agent that's of interest so that the pharma company can then turn around and use that outside of a clinical trial after an FDA approval. And so those studies are often done through the lens of getting over the finish line by showing some superiority over an existing treatment or in a new patient population. But they're done through that lens of kind of the broadest population and sometimes relatively narrow endpoints, but to get the approval so that then the drug can be widely utilized. Clinical trials done through cooperative groups are sometimes done to try and optimize that or to try and look at comparative things that may not be as attractive to pharma studies, not necessarily going for that initial approval, but the fine tuning or the looking at health outcomes or looking at ensuring that we do studies in representative populations that may not be as well identified on the pharma sponsored trials, but basically filling out the gaps in the knowledge that we didn't gain from the initial phase 3 trial that led to the approval. And so both are critical. But if we only do pharma sponsored trials, if we don't fund federally supported research and that dries up, the fear I have, and many others have, is that we're going to be lacking a lot of knowledge about the best ways to use these great new therapies, these new immune therapies, or in my team, we do a lot of clinical trials on CAR T-cell therapies. If we don't have federally funded research to do the important clinical studies, we'll be in the dark about the best ways to use these drugs, and that's going to be a terrible shame. And so we really do need to continue to support federal research. Dr. Monty Pal: Yeah, there are no softball questions on this podcast, but I think everybody would be hard pressed to think that you and I would come on here and say, "Well, no, we don't need as much money for clinical trials and NCI funding" and so forth. But I think a really challenging issue to tackle, and this is something we thought to ask you ahead of the podcast, is what to do about the general climate of, you know, whether it's academic research or clinical practice here that seems to be getting some of our colleagues thinking about moving elsewhere. I've actually talked to a couple of folks who are picking up and moving to Europe for a variety of considerations, other continents, frankly. The U.S. has always been a leader when it comes to oncology research and, one might argue, research in general. Some have the mindset these days that we're losing that footing a little bit. What's your perspective? Are you concerned about some of the trends that you're seeing? What does your crystal ball tell you? Dr. Jason Westin: I am highly concerned about this. I think as you said, the U.S. has been a leader for a long time, but it wasn't always. This is not something that's preordained that the world-leading clinical research and translational research will always be done in the United States. That is something that has been developed as an ecosystem, as an engine for innovation and for job development, new technology development, since World War II. That's something that through intentional investments in research was developed that the best and brightest around the world, if they could choose to go anywhere, you wanted them to come to work at universities and academic places within the United States. And I think, as you said, that's at risk if you begin to dry up the investment in research or if you begin to have less focus on being engaged in research in a way that is forward thinking, not just kind of maintaining what we do now or only looking at having private, for profit sponsored research. But if you don't have the investment in the basic science research and the translational research and the forward-thinking part of it, the fear is that we lose the advantage and that other countries will say, "Thank you very much," and be happy to invest in ways to their advantage. And I think as you mentioned, there are people that are beginning to look elsewhere. I don't think that it's likely that a significant population of researchers in the U.S. who are established and have careers and families – I don't think that we're going to see a mass exodus of folks. I think the real risk to me is that the younger, up-and-coming people in undergraduate or in graduate school or in medical school and are the future superstars, that they could either choose to go into a different field, so they decide not to go into what could be the latest breakthroughs for cancer patients but could be doing something in AI or something in a different field that could be attractive to them because of less uncertainty about funding streams, or they could take that job offer if it's in a different country. And I think that's the concern is it may not be a 2026 problem, but it could be a 2036 or a 2046 problem that we reap what we sow if we don't invest in the future. Dr. Monty Pal: Indeed, indeed. You know, I've had the pleasure of reviewing abstracts for some of our big international meetings, as I'm sure you've done in the past too. I see this trend where, as before, we would see the preponderance of large phase 3 clinical trials and practice setting studies being done here in the U.S., I'm seeing this emergence of China, of other countries outside of the U.S. really taking lead on these things. And it certainly concerns me. If I had to sort of gauge this particular issue, it's at the top of my list in terms of what I'm concerned about. But I also wanted to ask you, Jason, in terms of the issues that are looming over oncology from an advocacy perspective, what else really sort of keeps you up at night? Dr. Jason Westin: I'm quite concerned about the drug shortages. I think that's something that is a surprisingly evergreen problem. This is something that is on its face illogical that we're talking about the greatest engine for research in the world being the United States and the investment that we've made in drug development and the breakthroughs that have happened for patients all around the world, many of them happen in the United States, and yet we don't necessarily have access to drugs from the 1970s or 1980s that are cheap, generic, sterile, injectable drugs. This is the cisplatins and the vincristines and the fludarabine type medications which are not the sexy ones that you see the ads in the magazine or on TV at night. These are the backbone drugs for many of our curative intent regimens for pediatrics and for heme malignancies and many solid tumors. And the fact that that's continuing to be an issue is, in my opinion, a failure to address the root causes, and those are going to require legislative solutions. The root causes here are basically a race to the bottom where the economics to invest in quality manufacturing really haven't been prioritized. And so it's a race to the cheapest price, which often means you undercut your competitor, and when you don't have the money to invest in good manufacturing processes, the factory breaks down, there's no alternative, you go into shortage. And this has been going on for a couple of decades, and I don't think there's an end in sight until we get a serious solution proposed by our elected officials. That is something that bothers me in the ways where we know what we should be doing for our patients, but if we don't have the drugs, we're left to be creative in ways we shouldn't have to do to figure out a plan B when we've got curative intent therapies. And I think that's a real shame. There's obviously a lot of other things that are concerning related to oncology, but something that I have personally had experience with when I wanted to give a patient a CAR T-cell, and we don't have a supply of fludarabine, which is a trivial drug from decades ago in terms of the technology investments in genetically modified T-cells, to not then have access to a drug that should be pennies on the dollar and available at any time you want it is almost like the Air Force investing in building the latest stealth bomber, but then forgetting to get the jet fuel in a way that they can't use it because they don't have the tools that they need. And so I think that's something that we do need to have comprehensive solutions from our elected officials. Dr. Monty Pal: Brilliantly stated. I like that analogy a lot. Let's get into the weeds for a second. What would that proposal to Congress look like? What are we trying to put in front of them to help alleviate the drug shortages? Dr. Jason Westin: We could spend a couple hours, and I know podcasts usually are not set up to do that. And so I won't go through every part. I will direct you that there have been a couple of recent publications from ASCO specifically detailing solutions, and there was a recent white paper from the Senate Finance Committee that went through some legislative solutions being explored. So Dr. Gralow, ASCO CMO, and I recently had a publication in JCO OP detailing some solutions, more in that white paper from the Senate Finance. And then there's a working group actually going through ASCO's Health Policy Committee putting together a more detailed proposal that will be published probably around the end of 2026. Very briefly, what needs to happen is for government contracts for purchasing these drugs, there needs to be an outlay for quality, meaning that if you have a manufacturing facility that is able to deliver product on time, reliably, you get a bonus in terms of your contract. And that changes the model to prioritize the quality component of manufacturing. Without that, there's no reason to invest in maintaining your machine or upgrading the technology you have in your manufacturing plant. And so you have bottlenecks emerge because these drugs are cheap, and there's not a profit margin. So you get one factory that makes this key drug, and if that factory hasn't had an upgrade in their machines in 20 years, and that machine conks out and it takes 6 months to repair or replacement, that is an opportunity for that drug to go into shortage and causes a mad dash for big hospitals to purchase the drug that's available, leaving disparities to get amplified. It's a nightmare when those things happen, and they happen all the time. There are usually dozens, if not hundreds, of drugs in shortage at any given time. And this has been going on for decades. This is something that we do need large, system-wide fixes and that investment in quality, I think, will be a key part. Dr. Monty Pal: Yeah, brilliantly said. And I'll make sure that we actually include those articles on the tagline for this podcast as well. I'll talk to our producer about that as well. I'm really glad you mentioned the time in your last comment there because I felt like we just started, but in fact, I think we're right at our close here, Jason, unfortunately. So, I could have gone on for a couple more hours with you. I really want to thank you for these absolutely terrific insights and thank you for all your advocacy on behalf of ASCO and oncologists at large. Dr. Jason Westin: Thank you so much for having me. I have enjoyed it. Dr. Monty Pal: Thanks a lot. And many thanks to our listeners too. You can find more information about ASCO's advocacy agenda and activities at asco.org. Finally, if you value the insights that you heard today on the ASCO Daily News Podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much. ASCO Advocacy Resources: Get involved in ASCO's Advocacy efforts: ASCO Advocacy Toolkit Crisis of Cancer Drug Shortages: Understanding the Causes and Proposing Sustainable Solutions, JCO Oncology Practice Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Find out more about today's speakers: Dr. Monty Pal @montypal Dr. Jason Westin @DrJasonWestin Follow ASCO on social media: @ASCO on X ASCO on Bluesky ASCO on Facebook ASCO on LinkedIn Disclosures: Dr. Monty Pal: Speakers' Bureau: MJH Life Sciences, IntrisiQ, Peerview Research Funding (Inst.): Exelixis, Merck, Osel, Genentech, Crispr Therapeutics, Adicet Bio, ArsenalBio, Xencor, Miyarsian Pharmaceutical Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Crispr Therapeutics, Ipsen, Exelixis Dr. Jason Westin: Consulting or Advisory Role: Novartis, Kite/Gilead, Janssen Scientific Affairs, ADC Therapeutics, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Celgene/Juno, AstraZeneca, Genentech/Roche, Abbvie, MorphoSys/Incyte, Seattle Genetics, Abbvie, Chugai Pharma, Regeneron, Nurix, Genmab, Allogene Therapeutics, Lyell Immunopharma Research Funding: Janssen, Novartis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, MorphoSys/Incyte, Genentech/Roche, Allogene Therapeutics
Host: Emer Joyce Guest: Steffen Massberg Want to watch that extended interview on https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2178?resource=interview Go to: Want to watch that episode? Go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2178 Disclaimer ESC TV Today is supported by Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis through an independent funding. The programme has not been influenced in any way by its funding partners. This programme is intended for health care professionals only and is to be used for educational purposes. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) does not aim to promote medicinal products nor devices. Any views or opinions expressed are the presenters' own and do not reflect the views of the ESC. The ESC is not liable for any translated content of this video. The English language always prevails. Declarations of interests Emer Joyce and Steffen Massberg have declared to have no potential conflicts of interest to report.
This episode covers: Cardiology This Week: A concise summary of recent studies DAPT: how short is too short Obesity and atrial fibrillation Milestones: COURAGE Host: Emer Joyce Guests: Carlos Aguiar, Steffen Massberg, Prash Sanders Want to watch that episode? Go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2178 Want to watch that extended interview on dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) and shortening its optimal duration, go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2178?resource=interview Disclaimer ESC TV Today is supported by Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis through an independent funding. The programme has not been influenced in any way by its funding partners. This programme is intended for health care professionals only and is to be used for educational purposes. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) does not aim to promote medicinal products nor devices. Any views or opinions expressed are the presenters' own and do not reflect the views of the ESC. The ESC is not liable for any translated content of this video. The English language always prevails. Declarations of interests Stephan Achenbach, Yasmina Bououdina, Emer Joyce, Nicolle Kraenkel and Steffen Massberg have declared to have no potential conflicts of interest to report. Carlos Aguiar has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: personal fees for consultancy and/or speaker fees from Abbott, AbbVie, Alnylam, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, BiAL, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Daiichi-Sankyo, Ferrer, Gilead, GSK, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi, Servier, Takeda, Tecnimede. John-Paul Carpenter has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: stockholder MyCardium AI. Davide Capodanno has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: Bristol Myers Squibb, Daiichi Sankyo, Sanofi Aventis, Novo Nordisk, Terumo. Konstantinos Koskinas has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: honoraria from MSD, Daiichi Sankyo, Sanofi. Steffen Petersen has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: consultancy for Circle Cardiovascular Imaging Inc. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Prashanthan Sanders has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: advisory board representative University of Adelaide, Medtronic, Boston Scientific, CathRx, Abbott and Pacemate as well as research grants for University of Adelaide: Medtronic, Abbott, Boston Scientific, Becton Dickson. Emma Svennberg has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: Abbott, Astra Zeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers, Squibb-Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson.
Host: Emer Joyce Guest: Steffen Massberg Want to watch that extended interview on https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2178?resource=interview Go to: Want to watch that episode? Go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2178 Disclaimer ESC TV Today is supported by Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis through an independent funding. The programme has not been influenced in any way by its funding partners. This programme is intended for health care professionals only and is to be used for educational purposes. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) does not aim to promote medicinal products nor devices. Any views or opinions expressed are the presenters' own and do not reflect the views of the ESC. The ESC is not liable for any translated content of this video. The English language always prevails. Declarations of interests Emer Joyce and Steffen Massberg have declared to have no potential conflicts of interest to report.
Corey Salsberg, one of the leading voices on intellectual property policy in the United States, joins Clause 8 to discuss surviving the anti-pharma activism of the last administration, why he's encouraged by the current administration's approach to patent policy, and even the scientific possibility of “resurrecting the woolly mammoth.”As Global Head of IP at Novartis, Salsberg has a unique vantage point on how legal uncertainty affects the future of healthcare innovations. His work testifying before Congress has placed him at the center of the debate over the Supreme Court's Mayo, Myriad, and Alice decisions — rulings that he thinks have been followed by years of instability around Section 101, threatening investment in critical biotech and diagnostic breakthroughs.The conversation explores the political landscape surrounding the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), the persistence of myths like “patent thickets,” and the consequences of letting misinformation shape innovation policy. It also highlights what Congress can do to prevent the U.S. from falling behind in the race for gene and AI-driven therapeutics.Ultimately, Salsberg's perspective underscores how constructive, good-faith dialogue across industries remains essential to safeguarding innovation.
Send us a textIn this episode of The Myopia Podcast, we have Matt Oerding to share with us the 3 principles to grow your myopia management practice, his company Treehouse Eyes and GMACAbout Matt Oerding:Matt Oerding is the Co-Founder and CEO, Treehouse Eyes. An executive with 25 years of experience with Novartis, General Mills and General Electric. He has held leadership roles in marketing, strategy and general management in the U.S., Europe and Asia.Passionate about making a difference in people's lives, has focused on the eye care sector since 2001. Is also the past Board Chair for the Global Myopia Awareness Coalition (GMAC), a coalition of 15 companies and associations focused on driving public awareness of childhood myopia and treatment options. Lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and 2 daughters.---If you're considering or have ever considered getting a virtual team member for your practice check out hiredteem.com, mention The Myopia Podcast when signing up for a $250 dollar discount off of your first month's teem member.https://hireteem.com/myopia-podcast/
Cette semaine, on a tout eu : un marché qui tourne la veste plus vite qu'un politicien en campagne, une FED qui souffle le chaud, le froid et le conditionnel, des rumeurs de paix qui réveillent la construction, et Google qui redevient le boss final de l'IA pendant que tout le monde enterre OpenAI. On fait le point sur :
Happy Thanksgiving… Thursday, November 27, 2025. Week 48. Continued from #S10e189… And the AAV Paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40988338/) from #S10e187… https://curesyngap1.org/podcasts/syngap10/clinical-research-ai-dx-nl47-survey-autism-press-6-days-to-register-for-syngap1conf-s10e187/ https://curesyngap1.org/blog/ Issac's story, Transmitter reprint, Scramble 4 write up and JK on #Autism, #MustRead https://curesyngap1.org/resources/webinars/ 119 - 112 Register for livestream of the conference, AAV from Allen Inst., dos en espanol, Missense, Unlock and Rare-X for ProMMiS. https://curesyngap1.org/podcasts/syngap1-stories/ A gold mine have you listened to #38, the Virginie Pod, really must listen, she is our leader. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graglia_syngap1stories-syngap1-syngap1storiesty-activity-7387203351907708928-liNL CLINICAL TRIAL & GENETIC MEDICINE CORNER Example of Ultragenyx FAST Angelman follow on trial to look at other ages and genotypes, key message, never give up. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cureangelman_the-global-aurora-study-will-enroll-approximately-activity-7389647402690957312-Bihi Congrats to Novartis on approval of the first Gene Therapy to Cure SMA! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graglia_sma-fdaapproval-rarediseaseinnovation-activity-7398939783005347840-Ocd_ Remember Spinraza was approved in December 2019. TODOS Sign up for Citizen Health: https://www.citizen.health/partners/srf USE YOUR ICD-10 F78.A1 #S10e185 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dale0NbxDpU Go to CURE SYNGAP1 Conference 2025 Atlanta: https://curesyngap1.org/events/conferences/cure-syngap1-conference-2025-hosted-by-srf/ SOCIAL MATTERS 4,468 LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/curesyngap1/ 1,480 YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@CureSYNGAP1 11.2k Twitter https://twitter.com/cureSYNGAP1 45k Insta https://www.instagram.com/curesyngap1/ $CAMP stock is at $3.62 on 26 Nov. ‘25 https://www.google.com/finance/beta/quote/CAMP:NASDAQ Episode 190 of #Syngap10 #CureSYNGAP1
Send us a textGood morning from Pharma Daily: the podcast that brings you the most important developments in the pharmaceutical and biotech world. Today, we delve deep into a series of transformative events that underscore the dynamic nature of our industry, where scientific innovation meets regulatory evolution and market adaptation.We begin with significant regulatory news from Medicare, which recently announced price reductions for 15 prescription drugs, including Novo Nordisk's semaglutide products, Ozempic and Wegovy. This initiative is part of the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at making essential medications more affordable. By potentially increasing accessibility to these treatments, this move highlights a growing trend towards cost containment in drug pricing within the U.S. healthcare system. It reflects a broader effort to ensure that life-saving treatments remain within reach for more patients, emphasizing the need for balance between innovation and affordability.Turning to approvals, Otsuka has secured FDA clearance for Voyxact, a first-in-class treatment targeting IgA nephropathy (IgAN). This positions Otsuka in an increasingly competitive market space populated by major players like Novartis and Vertex. The entry of Voyxact could pave the way for innovative therapeutics in kidney diseases, offering new hope to patients who have had limited treatment options until now.On the other side of the Atlantic, French authorities have conducted a raid on Sanofi's headquarters as part of a tax fraud investigation. This development sheds light on ongoing scrutiny in the pharmaceutical sector regarding financial practices and regulatory compliance. Such investigations can have far-reaching implications on corporate governance and transparency, reminding us of the importance of ethical practices in maintaining industry trust.Novo Nordisk has strategically used its FDA national priority voucher to expedite the review process for a high-dose formulation of Wegovy. This move underscores the importance of regulatory incentives in accelerating drug development timelines, allowing for quicker patient access to potentially life-changing therapies. It's a testament to how strategic navigation through regulatory pathways can significantly impact drug availability.In clinical trials, Sarepta Therapeutics received FDA clearance to conduct a study combining its gene therapy Elevidys with sirolimus in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The study aims to address liver safety issues associated with Elevidys, which had led to previous label restrictions. This reflects the industry's commitment to enhancing therapeutic safety profiles while expanding treatment indications.In oncology advancements, AstraZeneca's Imfinzi received FDA approval for use in early-stage stomach cancer, marking its third perioperative indication. This approval underscores the expanding role of immunotherapy across various cancer types and stages, offering new treatment paradigms that could improve surgical outcomes and long-term patient survival.Despite these advances, there is skepticism regarding artificial intelligence's role in regulatory compliance submissions among pharmaceutical professionals. A survey reveals that 65% express distrust towards AI-generated outputs, highlighting challenges that AI technologies face in gaining acceptance within highly regulated environments such as pharmaceuticals. However, federal recommendations to revamp U.S. biotechnology research emphasize incorporating AI into scientific processes to maintain global competitiveness. This call reflects concerns over potential declines in innovation leadership and underscores the need for strategic investment in research infrastructure.In antitrust news, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) outlined its case agaiSupport the show
Send us a textGood morning from Pharma Daily: the podcast that brings you the most important developments in the pharmaceutical and biotech world. Today, we're diving into a landscape rich with scientific innovation, regulatory scrutiny, and strategic business decisions shaping the future of healthcare.Let's begin with Novartis, which has achieved a significant milestone by securing FDA approval for Itvisma. This is an intrathecal formulation of its gene therapy Zolgensma, designed to treat older patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Priced at $2.59 million, this approval is a critical advancement in gene therapy for SMA, broadening the treatment horizon for a wider patient demographic. Gene therapies are increasingly crucial in addressing rare genetic disorders, offering transformative potential in patient care. Novartis's SMA market expansion post-FDA approval of Itvisma not only enhances its SMA portfolio but also signifies growing acceptance towards gene therapies as viable treatment options for genetic disorders. Meanwhile, Novartis is strategically restructuring, planning to cut 550 jobs at a Swiss plant by 2027 while expanding its workforce in North Carolina. This move reflects broader industry trends toward optimizing global operations and investing in regions with strategic manufacturing capabilities.In the sphere of regulatory scrutiny, lawmakers are questioning the FDA's National Priority Voucher Program amid concerns about corruption and expedited reviews. This situation highlights ongoing challenges within regulatory frameworks to balance innovation speed with rigorous safety assessments. An investigation into the FDA's new priority review voucher program has been initiated due to concerns over corruption and expedited review processes potentially compromising drug safety. This inquiry could influence future regulatory frameworks and underscores balancing accelerated drug approvals with rigorous safety standards. Richard Pazdur expressed concerns about expedited drug approval programs' safety and legality as he takes on his new role as director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. These initiatives aim to accelerate drug reviews but spark debate over patient safety implications—underscoring an ongoing tension between innovation speed and regulatory diligence.Turning to Novo Nordisk, their expansion of the Amycretin program demonstrates a commitment to tackling chronic conditions like diabetes. Following promising Phase 2 data showcasing dual agonist capabilities, Novo Nordisk is advancing pivotal trials focused on obesity. This strategic pivot aligns with market needs and scientific discoveries that could significantly enhance diabetes management options. Further emphasizing Novo Nordisk's commitment to diabetes management, their expansion of the amycretin program after promising Phase 2 results demonstrates the efficacy of a dual agonist originally focused on obesity. This underscores a trend toward multifunctional biologics addressing metabolic disorders by targeting multiple pathways—indicative of broader industry shifts towards integrated therapeutic approaches. Novo Nordisk's recent mid-stage clinical trial results for Amycretin—a weight loss treatment—are noteworthy as they demonstrated sustained efficacy over 36 weeks in type 2 diabetes patients without a plateau in weight loss. Analysts highlight its potential as a superior therapeutic option in the burgeoning weight loss market due to its durable solution for weight management.On a contrasting note, SK Life Science encounters regulatory hurdles as the FDA scrutinizes advertising practices related to its antiseizure medication Xcopri. This scenario underscores the complex interplay between marketing strategies and regulatory compliance within the pharmaceuticSupport the show
Justin Thomas-Copeland is the CEO of the 4As, but key aspects of his career arc are defined by leadership assignments in the world of healthcare.Before he ascended to the top spot at the ad industry's leading trade association, Justin lived the best of both worlds in healthcare: working brandside and at an agency supporting pharma clients.In the early 2010s, he served as chief digital officer, Europe for Novartis – developing the Swiss drugmaker's first digital strategy. From there, he rejoined the agency world as the managing director and global client lead for Team Novartis at Wunderman EMEA.At the end of the decade, he served as global CEO of OPMG Health at Omnicom Precision Marketing Group.MM+M editor-in-chief Jameson Fleming brings us an extended conversation with Justin about what his early experience as a health leader taught him about advertising and why thinks digital marketing can reimagine health brands.And for our Trends segment, we're talking about Secretary Kennedy's admission that he personally directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change its guidance on the link between vaccines and autism. Check us out at: mmm-online.com Follow us: YouTube: @MMM-onlineTikTok: @MMMnewsInstagram: @MMMnewsonlineTwitter/X: @MMMnewsLinkedIn: MM+M To read more of the most timely, balanced and original reporting in medical marketing, subscribe here.Music: “Deep Reflection” by DP and Triple Scoop Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Ein Frauen-Akt wurde kurz nach Ausstellungseröffnung in der Volkshochschule entfernt. Arzneihersteller Novartis baut im Werk Stein Stellen ab. Das Kleidergeschäft Prediger in der Freiburger Innenstadt schließt.
The Uncommon Career Podcast: Career Change Strategies for Mid- to Senior-level Professionals
In this episode, explore the concept of unlearning silence with Elaine Lin Herring, a faculty member at Harvard Law and a bestselling author. Elaine discusses her book 'Unlearning Silence' and shares the toll of societal and personal expectations on our lives, particularly for women and immigrants. She delves into the importance of finding one's voice, understanding personal needs, and making intentional choices for a more aligned and fulfilling life. Through personal anecdotes and professional insights, she offers practical advice for overcoming self-doubt, utilizing our unique talents, and creating a life that's truly yours. Timestamps 01:14 The Burden of Expectations & Breaking Free from the Past 07:41 Rediscovering Your Voice, the Power of Self-Expression 14:56 The Journey to Unlearn Silence 27:37 Navigating Life's Uncertainties & Embracing Possibilities Amidst Challenges 30:06 Reevaluating Career Paths & The Importance of Market Awareness 31:55 Balancing Gratitude and Ambition, Exploring New Opportunities 40:10 Strategic Silence and Intentional Choices About Elaine Lin Hering Elaine Lin Hering is a speaker, facilitator, and former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. She works with organizations and individuals to build skills in communication, collaboration, and conflict management. She has worked on six continents and facilitated executive education at Harvard, Dartmouth, Tufts, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. She has served as the Advanced Training Director for the Harvard Mediation Program and a Managing Partner for a global leadership development firm. She has worked with coal miners at BHP Billiton, micro-finance organizers in East Africa, mental health professionals in China, and senior leadership at the US Department of Commerce. Her clients include American Express, Chevron, Google, Nike, Novartis, PayPal, Pixar, and the Red Cross. She was named a Thinkers50 global management thinker to watch and is the author of the USA Today Bestselling book Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully (Penguin). Connect with Elaine Connect with Elaine on LinkedIn Subscribe to Elaine's Newsletter _________________________________________________________________ Connect with Me Connect with me on LinkedIn From Zero Responses to Multiple Offers: Download The 5 Essential Steps Checklist Click here to learn about coaching
Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, EasyJet, TotalEnergies y Novartis son los protagonistas. Lo analizamos con Araceli de Frutos, asesora del fondo Alhaja Inversiones.
Novartis plant einen Stellenabbau an seinem Standort im aargauischen Stein. Bis Ende 2027 wird die Produktion von Tabletten und Kapseln sowie Verpackung von sterilen Arzneimitteln eingestellt. Der Abbau könnte einen Abbau von 550 Festanstellungen zur Folge haben.
Der Basler Pharmakonzern Novartis plant einen Stellenabbau an seinem Standort Stein AG. Insgesamt sollen rund 550 Stellen gestrichen werden. Ausserdem: · Theater Basel schliesst Spielzeit mit Verlust ab
Der Stellenabbau von Novartis stehe nicht im Zusammenhang mit Investitionen in die USA, betont Steffen Lang aus der Konzernleitung. Vielmehr sei die Verpackung von Medikamenten in der Schweiz zu teuer geworden – sie wird deshalb ins Ausland verlagert. Ausserdem: · Der Basler Regierungsrat beantragt zusätzliche WC-Anlagen und «nette Toiletten» für städtische Anlagen im Wert von knapp 6 Millionen Franken. · Das Theater Basel schreibt einen Verlust von gut 180'000 Franken. Das Loch in der Kasse könne das Theater mit Eigenkapital decken. · 20 Jahre Basel Tattoo: Wir schauen zurück auf Momente der Freude, aber auch der Kritik.
Der Basler Pharmakonzern Novartis will in Stein im Fricktal 550 Stellen abbauen. Die Produktion von Tabletten und Kapseln sowie die Verpackung von sterilen Arzneimitteln in Stein werde bis Ende 2027 eingestellt, teilt Novartis mit. Die verbleibende Produktion werde zudem vermehrt automatisiert. Weitere Themen in der Sendung: · Wenn sich eine Nachbarin oder ein Nachbar am Lärm einer Wärmepumpe stört, dann muss die Gemeinde diese überprüfen. Das Aargauer Baudepartement hat einen Leitentscheid gefällt. · Die Markthalle in Aarau bleibt bestehen. Der Einwohnerrat hat sich deutlich gegen einen Abriss ausgesprochen.
Tracey Felicidade Jones is the CEO and Founder of Trace Brand Building, a global branding and marketing agency with operations in South Africa and the United States that helps businesses build memorable, iconic brands. With over 20 years of experience in FMCG and pharma, Tracey's leadership has earned her company an impressive client list, including international brands like Dr. Oetker and Novartis, and results such as helping clients achieve Guinness World Records. Tracey's journey from growing up in South Africa during and after apartheid to relocating and successfully expanding her business in the US gives her a unique, resilient perspective on brand-building and entrepreneurship. In this episode… What does it really take to rebuild your life and business from the ground up? For some, reinvention is a branding exercise. For others, it's survival. How do you start over in a new country, in a new market, and still manage to build something stronger than before? For Tracey Felicidade Jones, the answer begins with grit and perspective. A lifelong entrepreneur who has faced everything from rolling blackouts to armed hijackings in South Africa, Tracey believes that true brand reinvention mirrors personal resilience. Drawing on her background in dietetics, global marketing, and storytelling, she built a business rooted in authenticity — helping companies rediscover their identity through archetypes and emotional connection. After relocating to Colorado, she reimagined her agency to fit the American market, proving that adaptability and heart can turn disruption into growth. Her story is a reminder that great brands, like great people, thrive by staying true to their essence while boldly embracing change. Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Tracey Felicidade Jones, CEO and Founder of Trace Brand Building, to discuss how she reinvented her global agency after moving from South Africa to the US. Tracey also shares her vision for the future of creative leadership and the importance of staying authentic in a rapidly changing world.
What if you could help someone completely transform their career in just 45 minutes, not by training them to be someone they're not, but by revealing who they've always been? In this episode, Steve Woodruff, author of "Clarity Wins" and "The Point," shares his unexpected journey from Vanderbilt astronomy student dreaming of becoming an astronaut to becoming the "King of Clarity" who's spent 20 years helping professionals discover and communicate their true identity. Through a pivotal relationship with a manager-friend who made one simple observation ("Let Steve run with sales and Rob run with service because that's what you're good at"), Steve discovered that fitting people into their strengths, not training them to overcome weaknesses, is the ultimate key to success. From consulting with pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, Novartis, and GSK to leading 100 emerging leaders globally during the pandemic to transforming his own pastor's preaching, Steve has developed the Clarity Fuel Formula, a brain science-backed framework that helps anyone cut through noise and connect powerfully. His philosophy is simple but revolutionary: "You can't read the label of the jar you're in." We need someone on the outside to reveal who we really are. Steve reveals how he helps people experience that jaw-dropping moment when someone finally sees them (and they see themselves), why the first 15 seconds of any interaction matter most, how "memory darts" beat elevator pitches every time, and why his biggest professional thrill is attaching the right words to someone's identity and watching their entire career trajectory transform. [00:03:59] The Journey: From Aspiring Astronaut to King of Clarity Childhood dream: becoming an astronaut Started at Vanderbilt University studying astronomy Hit a wall with calculus and physics, realized he loved words more than numbers Shifted to psychology, fascinated by how the human mind and communication work Moved into business sales and marketing [00:07:39] What Steve Does: Revealing Who People Really Are Works with corporations (pharma/biotech primarily) on communication training Developed the Clarity Fuel Formula: framework for clear communication in every format Real passion: entrepreneurs, solos, small businesses, and individuals Specializes in helping people discover their identity, purpose, and how to articulate it [00:09:23] Most Impactful Result: The Infrastructure Builder Met Jason, a sales training manager at pharma company, for networking lunch Through conversation, Steve identified Jason's core strength: infrastructure building Gave Jason the exact words to describe his superpower Jason found perfect role at training organization in disarray [00:12:00] Pandemic Pivot: Training 100 Leaders Globally via Zoom Companies forced to move training online during COVID Steve led personal branding workshop for 100 emerging leaders globally All done from his desk via Zoom, no travel for days required [00:14:38] What Inspires Steve: The Jaw-Drop Moment Most people (including himself for years) are only half-aware of who they really are People are guessing, trying different things without true north Has unique ability to ask questions and see themes emerge quickly The magic moment: 45-60 minutes in, holds up "figurative mirror" [00:17:04] The Relationship That Changed Everything During first 10-year career job, Steve and colleague split country for sales/service One person better at sales, other better at service, but both trying to do both This insight plus reading StrengthsFinder completely revolutionized Steve's view of work [00:21:41] Recent Impact: Transforming His Pastor's Preaching Steve's work applies 100% to church settings, not just business Pastor came to dinner, Steve discussed "memory darts" concept Memory darts: short, vivid ideas using analogies, illustrations, or stories instead of elevator pitches Pastor wanted to improve preaching and asked Steve for help [00:23:58] Where to Find Steve & His Resources Company: Clarity Fuel (clarityfuel.com redirects to stevewoodruff.com) Most active on LinkedIn with newsletter and regular posts about clarity Two books: "Clarity Wins" (branding, niches, pigeonholes) and "The Point" (universal framework for clear communication) The challenge: "The Point" is for 8 billion people, anyone, any role, any place, anytime [00:26:40] The First 15 Seconds: Why They Matter Most Success boils down to the first 15 seconds of any interaction Must earn attention with something interesting, relevant, and compelling Get rid of the elevator pitch (telling and selling) Learn to answer "What do you do?" in 15 seconds that makes people say "Huh? Tell me more" Biggest problem: TMI (Too Much Information) KEY QUOTES "You can't read the label of the jar you're in. We are not able to be objective about ourselves. We need someone on the outside who can look at us and say, this is really who you are." - Steve Woodruff "I'm not here to train people to become what they're not. I'm here to reveal to them who they are. When you try to train people to be what they're not, you're setting yourself and them up for a world of hurt." - Steve Woodruff "We have stewardship over our lives. We have one life. If we're wasting it, even with good intentions doing the wrong thing, that's a terrible shame." - Steve Woodruff "People don't need information. They need to know why they should care." - Steve Woodruff "Nobody wants to hear your monologue. They want to hear something that makes them say, 'What in the world are you talking about? Tell me about it.' And we're off and running." - Steve Woodruff CONNECT WITH STEVE WOODRUFF
Send us a textGood morning from Pharma Daily: the podcast that brings you the most important developments in the pharmaceutical and biotech world. Today, we delve into a landscape marked by significant scientific advancements, regulatory approvals, and strategic shifts that are reshaping the industry.Starting with Regeneron, the company's ophthalmic drug Eylea HD has recently secured two FDA approvals. These endorsements not only grant a new indication but also introduce a more flexible dosing regimen. This positions Eylea HD competitively against Roche's Vabysmo, highlighting the importance of regulatory navigation and strategic positioning in the pharmaceutical sector. These approvals come after extensive negotiations with both the FDA and third-party manufacturers, emphasizing the intricate processes involved in bringing a drug to market.In oncology, Bayer has achieved an accelerated FDA approval for Hyrnuo, a treatment targeting HER2-mutated non-small cell lung cancer. This move allows Bayer to challenge Boehringer Ingelheim's Hernexeos, underscoring the fiercely competitive nature of the oncology market. Such advancements are driven by innovative treatments that address specific genetic mutations in cancer patients, reflecting a broader trend towards precision medicine.Meanwhile, Moderna is investing heavily in mRNA production capabilities with a new $140 million facility in Norwood, Massachusetts. This development underscores Moderna's commitment to mRNA technology, which gained significant attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. The facility aims to establish robust domestic manufacturing infrastructures to mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities—a critical move considering recent global disruptions.Novartis is also making headlines with its plans for a flagship production hub in North Carolina. This expansion is expected to create 700 jobs and expand its manufacturing footprint by 700,000 square feet, highlighting Novartis's strategic emphasis on scaling up operations to meet growing demands and enhance production efficiency.In another strategic collaboration, Antheia has joined forces with Teva's TAPI division to enhance the commercialization prospects for its biosynthetic pipeline. This alliance marks a significant step toward advancing biologically derived pharmaceuticals, promising to revolutionize drug production through more sustainable and scalable alternatives to traditional chemical synthesis.On the regulatory front, Merck has received broad EU approval for a subcutaneous formulation of Keytruda. This development could significantly expand Keytruda's market reach across Europe, demonstrating how regulatory agility can extend drug lifecycles and maximize therapeutic impact across diverse patient populations.Compliance challenges remain prevalent, as illustrated by Pfizer and Tris Pharma's settlement of allegations related to ADHD medication Quillivant's quality control issues for $41.5 million. This case highlights ongoing efforts to ensure stringent quality standards within pharmaceutical manufacturing processes.Abbott is expanding its diagnostics portfolio through a $23 billion acquisition of Exact Sciences, known for its Cologuard colorectal cancer test. This acquisition indicates a strategic shift towards enhancing diagnostic capabilities alongside therapeutic offerings—a trend increasingly evident in holistic healthcare solutions.GSK is embarking on a $7 billion collaboration with biotechs Quotient and Profound through Flagship Pioneering. This partnership aims to leverage novel protein and genomic technologies to drive innovation in drug discovery and development, illustrating the industry's focus on integrating advanced biotechnological insights into traditional pharmaceutical frameworks.These developments collectively underscore crSupport the show
Dr. Linda Duska and Dr. Kathleen Moore discuss key studies in the evolving controversy over radical upfront surgery versus neoadjuvant chemotherapy in advanced ovarian cancer. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Linda Duska: Hello, and welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I am your guest host, Dr. Linda Duska. I am a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. On today's episode, we will explore the management of advanced ovarian cancer, specifically with respect to a question that has really stirred some controversy over time, going all the way back more than 20 years: Should we be doing radical upfront surgery in advanced ovarian cancer, or should we be doing neoadjuvant chemotherapy? So, there was a lot of hype about the TRUST study, also called ENGOT ov33/AGO-OVAR OP7, a Phase 3 randomized study that compares upfront surgery with neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval surgery. So, I want to talk about that study today. And joining me for the discussion is Dr. Kathleen Moore, a professor also of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Oklahoma and the deputy director of the Stephenson Cancer Center, also at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences. Dr. Moore, it is so great to be speaking with you today. Thanks for doing this. Dr. Kathleen Moore: Yeah, it's fun to be here. This is going to be fun. Dr. Linda Duska: FYI for our listeners, both of our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode. So let's just jump right in. We already alluded to the fact that the TRUST study addresses a question we have been grappling with in our field. Here's the thing, we have four prior randomized trials on this exact same topic. So, share with me why we needed another one and what maybe was different about this one? Dr. Kathleen Moore: That is, I think, the key question. So we have to level-set kind of our history. Let's start with, why is this even a question? Like, why are we even talking about this today? When we are taking care of a patient with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer, the aim of surgery in advanced ovarian cancer ideally is to prolong a patient's likelihood of disease-free survival, or if you want to use the term "remission," you can use the term "remission." And I think we can all agree that our objective is to improve overall survival in a way that also does not compromise her quality of life through surgical complications, which can have a big effect. The standard for many decades, certainly my entire career, which is now over 20 years, has been to pursue what we call primary cytoreductive surgery, meaning you get a diagnosis and we go right to the operating room with a goal of achieving what we call "no gross residual." That is very different – in the olden days, you would say "optimal" and get down to some predefined small amount of tumor. Now, the goal is you remove everything you can see. The alternative strategy to that is neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval cytoreductive surgery, and that has been the, quote-unquote, "safer" route because you chemically cytoreduce the cancer, and so, the resulting surgery, I will tell you, is not necessarily easy at all. It can still be very radical surgeries, but they tend to be less radical, less need for bowel resections, splenectomy, radical procedures, and in a short-term look, would be considered safer from a postoperative consideration. Dr. Linda Duska: Well, and also maybe more likely to be successful, right? Because there's less disease, maybe, theoretically. Dr. Kathleen Moore: More likely to be successful in getting to no gross residual. Dr. Linda Duska: Right. Yeah, exactly. Dr. Kathleen Moore: I agree with that. And so, so if the end game, regardless of timing, is you get to no gross residual and you help a patient and there's no difference in overall survival, then it's a no-brainer. We would not be having this conversation. But there remains a question around, while it may be more likely to get to no gross residual, it may be, and I think we can all agree, a less radical, safer surgery, do you lose survival in the long term by this approach? This has become an increasing concern because of the increase in rates of use of neoadjuvant, not only in this country, but abroad. And so, you mentioned the four prior studies. We will not be able to go through them completely. Dr. Linda Duska: Let's talk about the two modern ones, the two from 2020 because neither one of them showed a difference in overall survival, which I think we can agree is, at the end of the day, yes, PFS would be great, but OS is what we're looking for. Dr. Kathleen Moore: OS is definitely what we're looking for. I do think a marked improvement in PFS, like a real prolongation in disease-free survival, for me would be also enough. A modest improvement does not really cut it, but if you are really, really prolonging PFS, you should see that- Dr. Linda Duska: -manifest in OS. Dr. Kathleen Moore: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So let's talk about the two modern ones. The older ones are EORTC and CHORUS, which I think we've talked about. The two more modern ones are SCORPION and JCOG0602. So, SCORPION was interesting. SCORPION was a very small study, though. So one could say it's underpowered. 170 patients. And they looked at only patients that were incredibly high risk. So, they had to have a Fagotti score, I believe, of over 9, but they were not looking at just low volume disease. Like, those patients were not enrolled in SCORPION. It was patients where you really were questioning, "Should I go to the OR or should I do neoadjuvant? Like, what's the better thing?" It is easy when it's low volume. You're like, "We're going." These were the patients who were like, "Hm, you know, what should I do?" High volume. Patients were young, about 55. The criticism of the older studies, there are many criticisms, but one of them is that, the criticism that is lobbied is that they did not really try. Whatever surgery you got, they did not really try with median operative times of 180 minutes for primary cytoreduction, 120 for neoadjuvant. Like, you and I both know, if you're in a big primary debulking, you're there all day. It's 6 hours. Dr. Linda Duska: Right, and there was no quality control for those studies, either. Dr. Kathleen Moore: No quality control. So, SCORPION, they went 451-minute median for surgery. Like, they really went for it versus four hours and then 253 for the interval, 4 hours. They really went for it on both arms. Complete gross resection was achieved in 50% of the primary cytoreduced. So even though they went for it with these very long surgeries, they only got to the goal half the time. It was almost 80% in the interval group. So they were more successful there. And there was absolutely no difference in PFS or OS. They were right about 15 months PFS, right about 40 months OS. JCOG0602, of course, done in Japan, a big study, 300 patients, a little bit older population. Surprisingly more stage IV disease in this study than were in SCORPION. SCORPION did not have a lot of stage IV, despite being very bulky tumors. So a third of patients were stage IV. They also had relatively shorter operative times, I would say, 240 minutes for primary, 302 for interval. So still kind of short. Complete gross resection was not achieved very often. 30% of primary cytoreduction. That is not acceptable. Dr. Linda Duska: Well, so let's talk about TRUST. What was different about TRUST? Why was this an important study for us to see? Dr. Kathleen Moore: So the criticism of all of these, and I am not trying to throw shade at anyone, but the criticism of all of these is if you are putting surgery to the test, you are putting the surgeon to the test. And you are assuming that all surgeons are trained equally and are willing to do what it takes to get someone to no gross residual. Dr. Linda Duska: And are in a center that can support the post-op care for those patients. Dr. Kathleen Moore: Which can be ICU care, prolonged time. Absolutely. So when you just open these broadly, you're assuming everyone has the surgical skills and is comfortable doing that and has backup. Everybody has an ICU. Everyone has a blood bank, and you are willing to do that. And that assumption could be wrong. And so what TRUST said is, "Okay, we are only going to open this at centers that have shown they can achieve a certain level of primary cytoreduction to no gross residual disease." And so there was quality criteria. It was based on – it was mostly a European study – so ESGO criteria were used to only allow certified centers to participate. They had to have a surgical volume of over 36 cytoreductive surgeries per year. So you could not be a low volume surgeon. Your complete resection rates that were reported had to be greater than 50% in the upfront setting. I told you on the JCOG, it was 30%. Dr. Linda Duska: Right. So these were the best of the best. This was the best possible surgical situation you could put these patients in, right? Dr. Kathleen Moore: Absolutely. And you support all the things so you could mitigate postoperative complications as well. Dr. Linda Duska: So we are asking the question now again in the ideal situation, right? Dr. Kathleen Moore: Right. Dr. Linda Duska: Which, we can talk about, may or may not be generalizable to real life, but that's a separate issue because we certainly don't have those conditions everywhere where people get cared for with ovarian cancer. But how would you interpret the results of this study? Did it show us anything different? Dr. Kathleen Moore: I am going to say how we should interpret it and then what I am thinking about. It is a negative study. It was designed to show improvement in overall survival in these ideal settings in patients with FIGO stage IIIB and C, they excluded A, these low volume tumors that should absolutely be getting surgery. So FIGO stage IIIB and C and IVA and B that were fit enough to undergo radical surgery randomized to primary cytoreduction or neoadjuvant with interval, and were all given the correct chemo. Dr. Linda Duska: And they were allowed bevacizumab and PARP, also. They could have bevacizumab and PARP. Dr. Kathleen Moore: They were allowed bevacizumab and PARP. Not many of them got PARP, but it was distributed equally, so that would not be a confounder. And so that was important. Overall survival is the endpoint. It was a big study. You know, it was almost 600 patients. So appropriately powered. So let's look at what they reported. When they looked at the patients who were enrolled, this is a large study, almost 600 patients, 345 in the primary cytoreductive arm and 343 in the neoadjuvant arm. Complete resection in these patients was 70% in the primary cytoreductive arm and 85% in the neoadjuvant arm. So in both arms, it was very high. So your selection of site and surgeon worked. You got people to their optimal outcome. So that is very different than any other study that has been reported to date. But what we saw when we looked at overall survival was no statistical difference. The median was, and I know we do not like to talk about medians, but the median in the primary cytoreductive arm was 54 months versus 48 months in the neoadjuvant arm with a hazard ratio of 0.89 and, of course, the confidence interval crossed one. So this is not statistically significant. And that was the primary endpoint. Dr. Linda Duska: I know you are getting to this. They did look at PFS, and that was statistically significant, but to your point about what are we looking for for a reasonable PFS difference? It was about two months difference. When I think about this study, and I know you are coming to this, what I thought was most interesting about this trial, besides the fact that the OS, the primary endpoint was negative, was the subgroup analyses that they did. And, of course, these are hypothesis-generating only. But if you look at, for example, specifically only the stage III group, that group did seem to potentially, again, hypothesis generating, but they did seem to benefit from upfront surgery. And then one other thing that I want to touch on before we run out of time is, do we think it matters if the patient is BRCA germline positive? Do we think it matters if there is something in particular about that patient from a biomarker standpoint that is different? I am hopeful that more data will be coming out of this study that will help inform this. Of course, unpowered, hypothesis-generating only, but it's just really interesting. What do you think of their subset analysis? Dr. Kathleen Moore: Yeah, I think the subsets are what we are going to be talking about, but we have to emphasize that this was a negative trial as designed. Dr. Linda Duska: Absolutely. Yes. Dr. Kathleen Moore: So we cannot be apologists and be like, "But this or that." It was a negative trial as designed. Now, I am a human and a clinician, and I want what is best for my patients. So I am going to, like, go down the path of subset analyses. So if you look at the stage III tumors that got complete cytoreduction, which was 70% of the cases, your PFS was almost 28 months versus 21.8 months. Dr. Linda Duska: Yes, it becomes more significant. Dr. Kathleen Moore: Yeah, that hazard ratio is 0.69. Again, it is a subset. So even though the P value here is statistically significant, it actually should not have a P value because it is an exploratory analysis. So we have to be very careful. But the hazard ratio is 0.69. So the hypothesis is in this setting, if you're stage III and you go for it and you get someone to no gross residual versus an interval cytoreduction, you could potentially have a 31% reduction in the rate of progression for that patient who got primary cytoreduction. And you see a similar trend in the stage III patients, if you look at overall survival, although the post-progression survival is so long, it's a little bit narrow of a margin. But I do think there are some nuggets here that, one of our colleagues who is really one of the experts in surgical studies, Dr. Mario Leitao, posted this on X, and I think it really resonated after this because we were all saying, "But what about the subsets?" He is like, "It's a negative study." But at the end of the day, you are going to sit with your patient. The patient should be seen by a GYN oncologist or surgical oncologist with specialty in cytoreduction and a medical oncologist, you know, if that person does not give chemo, and the decision should be made about what to do for that individual patient in that setting. Dr. Linda Duska: Agreed. And along those lines, if you look carefully at their data, the patients who had an upfront cytoreduction had almost twice the risk of having a stoma than the patients who had an interval cytoreduction. And they also had a higher risk of needing to have a bowel resection. The numbers were small, but still, when you look at the surgical complications, as you've already said, they're higher in the upfront group than they are in the interval group. That needs to be taken into account as well when counseling a patient, right? When you have a patient in front of you who says to you, "Dr. Moore, you can take out whatever you want, but whatever you do, don't make me a bag." As long as the patient understands what that means and what they're asking us to do, I think that we need to think about that. Dr. Kathleen Moore: I think that is a great point. And I have definitely seen in our practice, patients who say, "I absolutely would not want an ostomy. It's a nonstarter for me." And we do make different decisions. And you have to just say, "That's the decision we've made," and you kind of move on, and you can't look back and say, "Well, I wish I would have, could have, should have done something else." That is what the patient wants. Ultimately, that patient, her family, autonomous beings, they need to be fully counseled, and you need to counsel that patient as to the site that you are in, her volume of disease, and what you think you can achieve. In my opinion, a patient with stage III cancer who you have the site and the capabilities to get to no gross residual should go to the OR first. That is what I believe. I do not anymore think that for stage IV. I think that this is pretty convincing to me that that is probably a harmful thing. However, I want you to react to this. I think I am going to be a little unpopular in saying this, but for me, one of the biggest take-homes from TRUST was that whether or not, and we can talk about the subsets and the stage III looked better, and I think it did, but both groups did really well. Like, really well. And these were patients with large volume disease. This was not cherry-picked small volume stage IIIs that you could have done an optimal just by doing a hysterectomy. You know, these were patients that needed radical surgery. And both did well. And so what it speaks to me is that anytime you are going to operate on someone with ovary, whether it be frontline, whether it be a primary or interval, you need a high-volume surgeon. That is what I think this means to me. Like, I would want high volume surgeon at a center that could do these surgeries, getting that patient, my family member, me, to no gross residual. That is important. And you and I are both in training centers. I think we ought to take a really strong look at, are we preparing people to do the surgeries that are necessary to get someone to no gross residual 70% and 85% of the time? Dr. Linda Duska: We are going to run out of time, but I want to address that and ask you a provocative question. So, I completely agree with what you said, that surgery is important. But I also think one of the reasons these patients in this study did so well is because all of the incredible new therapies that we have for patients. Because OS is not just about surgery. It is about surgery, but it is also about all of the amazing new therapies we have that you and others have helped us to get through clinical research. And so, how much of that do you think, like, for example, if you look at the PFS and OS rates from CHORUS and EORTC, I get it that they're, that they're not the same. It's different patients, different populations, can't do cross-trial comparisons. But the OS, as you said, in this study was 54 months and 48 months, which is, compared to 2010, we're doing much, much better. It is not just the surgery, it is also all the amazing treatment options we have for these patients, including PARP, including MIRV, including lots of other new therapies. How do you fit that into thinking about all of this? Dr. Kathleen Moore: I do think we are seeing, and we know this just from epidemiologic data that the prevalence of ovarian cancer in many of the countries where the study was done is increasing, despite a decrease in incidence. And why is that? Because people are living longer. Dr. Linda Duska: People are living longer, yeah. Dr. Kathleen Moore: Which is phenomenal. That is what we want. And we do have, I think, better supportive care now. PARP inhibitors in the frontline, which not many of these patients had. Now some of them, this is mainly in Europe, will have gotten them in the first maintenance setting, and I do think that impacts outcome. We do not have that data yet, you know, to kind of see what, I would be really interested to see. We do not do this well because in ovarian cancer, post-progression survival can be so long, we do not do well of tracking what people get when they come off a clinical trial to see how that could impact – you know, how many of them got another surgery? How many of them got a PARP? I think this group probably missed the ADC wave for the most part, because this, mirvetuximab is just very recently available in Europe. Dr. Linda Duska: Unless they were on trial. Dr. Kathleen Moore: Unless they were on trial. But I mean, I think we will have to see. 600 patients, I would bet a lot of them missed the ADC wave. So, I do not know that we can say we know what drove these phenomenal – these are some of the best curves we've seen outside of BRCA. And then coming back to your point about the BRCA population here, that is a really critical question that I do not know that we're ever going to answer. There have been hypotheses around a tumor that is driven by BRCA, if you surgically cytoreduced it, and then chemically cytoreduced it with chemo, and so you're starting PARP with nothing visible and likely still homogeneous clones. Is that the group we cured? And then if you give chemo first before surgery, it allows more rapid development of heterogeneity and more clonal evolution that those are patients who are less likely to be cured, even if they do get cytoreduced to nothing at interval with use of PARP inhibitor in the front line. That is a question that many have brought up as something we would like to understand better. Like, if you are BRCA, should you always just go for it or not? I do not know that we're ever going to really get to that. We are trying to look at some of the other studies and just see if you got neoadjuvant and you had BRCA, was anyone cured? I think that is a question on SOLO1 I would like to know the answer to, and I don't yet, that may help us get to that. But that's sort of something we do think about. You should have a fair number of them in TRUST. It wasn't a stratification factor, as I remember. Dr. Linda Duska: No, it wasn't. They stratified by center, age, and ECOG status Dr. Kathleen Moore: So you would hope with randomization that you would have an equal number in each arm. And they may be able to pull that out and do a very exploratory look. But I would be interested to see just completely hypothesis-generating what this looks like for the patients with BRCA, and I hope that they will present that. I know they're busy at work. They have translational work. They have a lot pending with TRUST. It's an incredibly rich resource that I think is going to teach us a lot, and I am excited to see what they do next. Dr. Linda Duska: So, outside of TRUST, we are out of time. I just want to give you a moment if there were any other messages that you want to share with our listeners before we wrap up. Dr. Kathleen Moore: It's an exciting time to be in GYN oncology. For so long, it was just chemo, and then the PARP inhibitors nudged us along quite a bit. We did move more patients, I believe, to the cure fraction. When we ultimately see OS, I think we'll be able to say that definitively, and that is exciting. But, you know, that is the minority of our patients. And while HRD positive benefits tremendously from PARP, I am not as sure we've moved as many to the cure fraction. Time will tell. But 50% of our patients have these tumors that are less HRD. They have a worse prognosis. I think we can say that and recur more quickly. And so the advent of these antibody-drug conjugates, and we could name 20 of them in development in GYN right now, targeting tumor-associated antigens because we're not really driven by mutations other than BRCA. We do not have a lot of things to come after. We're not lung cancer. We are not breast cancer. But we do have a lot of proteins on the surface of our cancers, and we are finally able to leverage that with some very active regimens. And we're in the early phases, I would say, of really understanding how best to use those, how best to position them, and which one to select for whom in a setting where there is going to be obvious overlap of the targets. So we're going to be really working this problem. It is a good problem. A lot of drugs that work pretty well. How do you individualize for a patient, the patient in front of you with three different markers? How do you optimize it? Where do you put them to really prolong survival? And then we finally have cell surface. We saw at ASCO, CDK2 come into play here for the first time, we've got a cell cycle inhibitor. We've been working on WEE1 and ATR for a long time. CDK2s may hit. Response rates were respectable in a resistant population that was cyclin E overexpressing. We've been working on that biomarker for a long time with a toxicity profile that was surprisingly clean, which I like to see for our patients. So that is a different platform. I think we have got bispecifics on the rise. So there is a pipeline of things behind the ADCs, which is important because we need more than one thing, that makes me feel like in the future, I am probably not going to be using doxil ever for platinum-resistant disease. So, I am going to be excited to retire some of those things. We will say, "Remember when we used to use doxil for platinum-resistant disease?" Dr. Linda Duska: I will be retired by then, but thanks for that thought. Dr. Kathleen Moore: I will remind you. Dr. Linda Duska: You are right. It is such an incredibly exciting time to be taking care of ovarian cancer patients with all the opportunities. And I want to thank you for sharing your valuable insights with us on this podcast today and for your great work to advance care for patients with GYN cancers. Dr. Kathleen Moore: Likewise. Thanks for having me. Dr. Linda Duska: And thank you to our listeners for your time today. You will find links to the TRUST study and other studies discussed today in the transcript of this episode. Finally, if you value the insights that you hear on the ASCO Daily News Podcast, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. More on today's speakers: Dr. Linda Duska @Lduska Dr. Kathleen Moore Follow ASCO on social media: @ASCO on X (formerly Twitter) ASCO on Bluesky ASCO on Facebook ASCO on LinkedIn Disclosures of Potential Conflicts of Interest: Dr. Linda Duska: Consulting or Advisory Role: Regeneron, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Merck, Ellipses Pharma Research Funding (Inst.): GlaxoSmithKline, Millenium, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Aeterna Zentaris, Novartis, Abbvie, Tesaro, Cerulean Pharma, Aduro Biotech, Advaxis, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Leap Therapeutics Patents, Royalties, Other Intellectual Property: UptToDate, Editor, British Journal of Ob/Gyn Dr. Kathleen Moore: Leadership: GOG Partners, NRG Ovarian Committee Chair Honoraria: Astellas Medivation, Clearity Foundation, IDEOlogy Health, Medscape, Great Debates and Updates, OncLive/MJH Life Sciences, MD Outlook, Curio Science, Plexus, University of Florida, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Congress Chanel, BIOPHARM, CEA/CCO, Physician Education Resource (PER), Research to Practice, Med Learning Group, Peerview, Peerview, PeerVoice, CME Outfitters, Virtual Incision Consulting/Advisory Role: Genentech/Roche, Immunogen, AstraZeneca, Merck, Eisai, Verastem/Pharmacyclics, AADi, Caris Life Sciences, Iovance Biotherapeutics, Janssen Oncology, Regeneron, zentalis, Daiichi Sankyo Europe GmbH, BioNTech SE, Immunocore, Seagen, Takeda Science Foundation, Zymeworks, Profound Bio, ADC Therapeutics, Third Arc, Loxo/Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, Tango Therapeutics, Abbvie, T Knife, F Hoffman La Roche, Tubulis GmbH, Clovis Oncology, Kivu, Genmab/Seagen, Kivu, Genmab/Seagen, Whitehawk, OnCusp Therapeutics, Natera, BeiGene, Karyopharm Therapeutics, Day One Biopharmaceuticals, Debiopharm Group, Foundation Medicine, Novocure Research Funding (Inst.): Mersana, GSK/Tesaro, Duality Biologics, Mersana, GSK/Tesaro, Duality Biologics, Merck, Regeneron, Verasatem, AstraZeneca, Immunogen, Daiichi Sankyo/Lilly, Immunocore, Torl Biotherapeutics, Allarity Therapeutics, IDEAYA Biosciences, Zymeworks, Schrodinger Other Relationship (Inst.): GOG Partners
This episode covers: Cardiology This Week: A concise summary of recent studies 'ChatGPT, MD?' - Large Language Models at the Bedside Management decisions in myocarditis Statistics Made Easy: Mendelian randomisation Host: Emer Joyce Guests: Carlos Aguiar, Folkert Asselbergs, Massimo Imazio Want to watch that episode? Go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2179 Want to watch that extended interview on 'ChatGPT, MD?': Large Language Models at the Bedside? Go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2179?resource=interview Disclaimer: ESC TV Today is supported by Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis through an independent funding. The programme has not been influenced in any way by its funding partners. This programme is intended for health care professionals only and is to be used for educational purposes. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) does not aim to promote medicinal products nor devices. Any views or opinions expressed are the presenters' own and do not reflect the views of the ESC. The ESC is not liable for any translated content of this video. The English language always prevails. Declarations of interests: Stephan Achenbach, Folkert Asselbergs, Yasmina Bououdina, Massimo Imazio, Emer Joyce, and Nicolle Kraenkel have declared to have no potential conflicts of interest to report. Carlos Aguiar has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: personal fees for consultancy and/or speaker fees from Abbott, AbbVie, Alnylam, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, BiAL, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Daiichi-Sankyo, Ferrer, Gilead, GSK, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi, Servier, Takeda, Tecnimede. John-Paul Carpenter has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: stockholder MyCardium AI. Davide Capodanno has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: Bristol Myers Squibb, Daiichi Sankyo, Sanofi Aventis, Novo Nordisk, Terumo. Konstantinos Koskinas has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: honoraria from MSD, Daiichi Sankyo, Sanofi. Steffen Petersen has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: consultancy for Circle Cardiovascular Imaging Inc. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Emma Svennberg has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: Abbott, Astra Zeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers, Squibb-Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson.
Host: Emer Joyce Guest: Folkert Asselbergs Want to watch that episode? Go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2179 Want to watch that extended interview on 'ChatGPT, MD?': Large Language Models at the Bedside? Go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2179?resource=interview Disclaimer: ESC TV Today is supported by Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis through an independent funding. The programme has not been influenced in any way by its funding partners. This programme is intended for health care professionals only and is to be used for educational purposes. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) does not aim to promote medicinal products nor devices. Any views or opinions expressed are the presenters' own and do not reflect the views of the ESC. The ESC is not liable for any translated content of this video. The English language always prevails. Declarations of interests: Stephan Achenbach, Folkert Asselbergs, Yasmina Bououdina, Emer Joyce, and Nicolle Kraenkel have declared to have no potential conflicts of interest to report. Carlos Aguiar has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: personal fees for consultancy and/or speaker fees from Abbott, AbbVie, Alnylam, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, BiAL, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Daiichi-Sankyo, Ferrer, Gilead, GSK, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi, Servier, Takeda, Tecnimede. John-Paul Carpenter has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: stockholder MyCardium AI. Davide Capodanno has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: Bristol Myers Squibb, Daiichi Sankyo, Sanofi Aventis, Novo Nordisk, Terumo. Konstantinos Koskinas has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: honoraria from MSD, Daiichi Sankyo, Sanofi. Steffen Petersen has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: consultancy for Circle Cardiovascular Imaging Inc. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. E mma Svennberg has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: Abbott, Astra Zeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers, Squibb-Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson. Abbott, Astra Zeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers, Squibb-Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson.
Capital Intereconomía ha seguido en directo una apertura de las bolsas europeas marcada por la fuerte rotación del sentimiento inversor. Luis García Langa (SDC Analistas) ha analizado un mercado que pasa del “pánico” al entusiasmo tras el efecto arrastre de Nvidia, cuyos resultados han devuelto el optimismo al sector tecnológico global. Sin embargo, la falta del informe de empleo de octubre —que la Fed no podrá utilizar en su próxima decisión— añade incertidumbre al rumbo de los tipos de interés. En el plano empresarial, los inversores miran hoy a Walmart, que publica resultados después del tropiezo de Home Depot, y al sector farma, donde Novartis prevé elevar sus ventas anuales un 5-6% hasta 2030. En materias primas, el bitcóin rebota con fuerza mientras el oro cede terreno tras varias sesiones de impulso. La mañana se ha completado con el consultorio de bolsa junto a Franco Macchiavelli, que ha resuelto dudas de los oyentes en pleno resurgimiento del apetito por el riesgo.
Melissa sits down with Dr. Laila Agrawal, a board-certified breast oncologist who leads a sexual health clinic dedicated to the breast cancer community. As part of the "Empowered Intimacy: Getting Your Sexy Back After Breast Cancer" series, they talk about how to restore sexual comfort, pleasure, and connection after a breast cancer diagnosis. Dr. Agrawal offers practical guidance on vibrators, lubricants, vaginal estrogen, and pelvic floor therapy, while clearing up common misconceptions and stressing the importance of open communication with both partners and providers. This episode focuses on both the emotional and physical sides of intimacy and teaches listeners how to regain desire, comfort, and confidence in their sexual health after a breast cancer diagnosis. Special thanks to Lilly and Novartis for supporting the Cancer Fashionista Foundation and making this series possible.
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Michiel van Duin, Chief People Technology, Data and Insights Officer at Novartis to discuss how the company is building a human-centered AI ecosystem that connects people, data, and technology.Michiel explains how Novartis brings together HR, IT, and corporate strategy to align AI innovation with the company's long-term workforce and business goals. He shares how the team built an AI governance framework and a dedicated AI and innovation function inside HR, ensuring responsible use of AI while maintaining trust and transparency.From defining when AI should step in and when a “human-in-the-loop” is essential, to upskilling employees and creating the first “Ask Novartis” AI assistant, Michiel shows how Novartis is making AI practical, ethical, and human.
Authors Drs. Jessica Ross and Alissa Cooper share insights into their JCO PO article, "Clinical and Pathologic Landscapes of Delta-Like Ligand 3 and Seizure-Related Homolog Protein 6 Expression in Neuroendocrine Carcinomas" Host Dr. Rafeh Naqash and Drs. Ross and Cooper discuss the landscape of Delta-like ligand 3 (DLL3) and seizure-related homolog protein 6 (SEZ6) across NECs from eight different primary sites. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Hello and welcome to JCO Precision Oncology Conversations, where we bring you engaging conversations with authors of clinically relevant and highly significant JCO PO articles. I'm your host, Dr. Rafeh Naqash, podcast editor for JCO PO and an Associate Professor at the OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Dr. Jessica Ross, third-year medical oncology fellow at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, as well as Dr. Alissa Cooper, thoracic medical oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Both are first and last authors of the JCO Precision Oncology article entitled "Clinical and Pathologic Landscapes of Delta-like Ligand 3 and Seizure-Related Homolog Protein 6 or SEZ6 Protein Expression in Neuroendocrine Carcinomas." At the time of this recording, our guest disclosures will be linked in the transcript. Jessica and Alissa, welcome to our podcast, and thank you for joining us today. Dr. Jessica Ross: Thanks very much for having us. Dr. Alissa Cooper: Thank you. Excited to be here. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: It's interesting, a couple of days before I decided to choose this article, one of my GI oncology colleagues actually asked me two questions. He said, "Rafeh, do you know how you define DLL3 positivity? And what is the status of DLL3 positivity in GI cancers, GI neuroendocrine carcinomas?" The first thing I looked up was this JCO article from Martin Wermke. You might have seen it as well, on obrixtamig, a phase 1 study, a DLL3 bi-specific T-cell engager. And they had some definitions there, and then this article came along, and I was really excited that it kind of fell right in place of trying to understand the IHC landscape of two very interesting targets. Since we have a very broad and diverse audience, especially community oncologists, trainees, and of course academic clinicians and some people who are very interested in genomics, we'll try to make things easy to understand. So my first question for you, Jessica, is: what is DLL3 and SEZ6 and why are they important in neuroendocrine carcinomas? Dr. Jessica Ross: Yeah, good question. So, DLL3, or delta-like ligand 3, is a protein that is expressed preferentially on the tumor cell surface of neuroendocrine carcinomas as opposed to normal tissue. It is a downstream target of ASCL1, and it's involved in neuroendocrine differentiation, and it's an appealing drug target because it is preferentially expressed on tumor cell surfaces. And so, it's a protein, and there are several drugs in development targeting this protein, and then Tarlatamab is an approved bi-specific T-cell engager for the treatment of extensive-stage small cell lung cancer in the second line. SEZ6, or seizure-like homolog protein 6, is a protein also expressed on neuroendocrine carcinoma cell surface. Interestingly, so it's expressed on neuronal cells, but its exact role in neuroendocrine carcinomas and oncogenesis is actually pretty poorly understood, but it was identified as an appealing drug target because, similarly to DLL3, it's preferentially expressed on the tumor cell surface. And so this has also emerged as an appealing drug target, and there are drugs in development, including antibody-drug conjugates, targeting this protein for that reason. Dr. Alissa Cooper: Over the last 10 to 15 years or so, there's been an increasing focus on precision oncology, finding specific targets that actually drive the cancer to grow, not just within lung cancer but in multiple other primary cancers. But specifically, at least speaking from a thoracic oncology perspective, the field of non-small cell lung cancer has completely exploded over the past 15 years with the discovery of driver oncogenes and then matched targeted therapies. Within the field of neuroendocrine carcinomas, including small cell lung cancer but also other high-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas, there has not been the same sort of progress in terms of identifying targets with matched therapies. And up until recently, we've sort of been treating these neuroendocrine malignancies kind of as a monolithic disease process. And so recently, there's been sort of an explosion of research across the country and multiple laboratories, multiple people converging on the same open questions about why might patients with specific tumor biologies have different kind of responses to different therapies. And so first this came from, you know, why some patients might have a good response to chemo and immunotherapy, which is the first-line approved therapy for small cell lung cancer, and we also sort of extrapolate that to other high-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas. What's the characteristic of that tumor biology? And at the same time, what are other targets that might be identifiable? Just as Jesse was saying, they're expressed on the cell surface, they're not necessarily expressed in normal tissue. Might this be a strategy to sort of move forward and create smarter therapies for our patients and therefore move really into a personalized era for treatment for each patient? And that's really driving, I think, a lot of the synthesis of this work of not only the development of multiple new therapies, but really understanding which tumor might be the best fit for which therapy. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Thank you for that explanation, Alissa. And as you mentioned, these are emerging targets, some more further along in the process with approved drugs, especially Tarlatamab. And obviously, DLL3 was something identified several years back, but drug development does take time, and readout for clinical trials takes time. Could you, for the sake of our audience, try to talk briefly about the excitement around Tarlatamab in small cell lung cancer, especially data that has led to the FDA approval in the last year, year and a half? Dr. Alissa Cooper: Sure. Yeah, it's really been an explosion of excitement over, as you're saying, the last couple of years, and work really led by our mentor, Charlie Rudin, had identified DLL3 as an exciting target for small cell lung cancer specifically but also potentially other high-grade neuroendocrine malignancies. Tarlatamab is a DLL3-targeting bi-specific T-cell engager, which targets DLL3 on the small cell lung cancer cells as well as CD3 on T cells. And the idea is to sort of introduce the cancer to the immune system, circumventing the need for MHC class antigen presentation, which that machinery is typically not functional in small cell lung cancer, and so really allowing for an immunomodulatory response, which had not really been possible for most patients with small cell lung cancer prior to this. Tarlatamab was tested in a phase 2 registrational trial of about 100 patients and demonstrated a response rate of 40%, which was very exciting, especially compared with other standard therapies which were available for small cell lung cancer, which are typically cytotoxic therapies. But most excitingly, more than even the response rate, I think, in our minds was the durability of response. So patients whose disease did have a response to Tarlatamab could potentially have a durable response lasting a number of months or even over a year, which had previously not ever been seen in this in the relapsed/refractory setting for these patients. I think the challenge with small cell lung cancer and other high-grade neuroendocrine malignancies is that a response to therapy might be a bit easier to achieve, but it's that durability. The patient's tumors really come roaring back quite aggressively pretty quickly. And so this was sort of the most exciting prospect is that durability of response, that long potential overall survival tail of the curve really being lifted up. And then most recently at ASCO this year, Dr. Rudin presented the phase 3 randomized controlled trial which compared Tarlatamab to physician's choice of chemotherapy in a global study. And the choice of chemotherapy did vary depending on the part of the world that the patients were enrolled in, but in general, it was a really markedly positive study for response rate, for progression-free survival, and for overall survival. Really exciting results which really cemented Tarlatamab's place as the standard second-line therapy for patients with small cell lung cancer whose disease has progressed on first-line chemo-immunotherapy. So that has been very exciting. This drug was FDA approved in May of 2024, and so has been used extensively since then. I think the adoption has been pretty widespread, at least in the US, but now in this global trial that was just presented, and there was a corresponding New England Journal paper, I think really confirms that this is something we really hopefully can offer to most of our patients. And I think, as we all know, that this therapy or other therapies like it are also being tested potentially in the first-line setting. So there was data presented with Tarlatamab incorporated into the maintenance setting, which also showed exciting results, albeit in a phase 1 trial, but longer overall survival than we're used to seeing in this patient population. And we await results of the study that is incorporating Tarlatamab into the induction phase with chemotherapy as well. So all of this is extraordinarily exciting for our patients to sort of move the needle of how many patients we can keep alive, feeling functional, feeling well, for as long as possible. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Very exciting session at ASCO. I was luckily one of the co-chairs for the session that Dr. Rudin presented it, and I remember somebody mentioning there was more progress seen in that session for small cell lung cancer than the last 30, 35 years for small cell, very exciting space and time to be in as far as small cell lung cancer. Now going to this project, Jessica, since you're the first author and Alissa's the last, I'm assuming there was a background conversation that you had with Alissa before you embarked on this project as an idea. So could you, again, for other trainees who are interested in doing research, and it's never easy to do research as a resident and a fellow when you have certain added responsibilities. Could you give us a little bit of a background on how this started and why you wanted to look at this question? Dr. Jessica Ross: Yeah, sure. So, as with many exciting research concepts, I think a lot of them are derived from the clinic. And so I think Alissa and I both see a good number of patients with small cell, large cell lung cancer, and then high-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas. And so I think this was really born out of a basic conversation of we have these drugs in development targeting these two proteins, DLL3 and SEZ6, but really what is the landscape of cancers that express these proteins and who are the patients that really might benefit from these exciting new therapies. And of course, there was some data out there, but sort of less than one would imagine in terms of, you know, neuroendocrine carcinomas can really come from anywhere in the body. And so when you're seeing a patient with small cell of the cervix, for example, like what are the chances that their cancer expresses DLL3 or expresses SEZ6? So it was really derived from this pragmatic, clinically oriented question that we had both found ourselves thinking about, and we were lucky enough at MSK, we had started systematically staining patients' tumors for DLL3, tumors that are high-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas, and then we had also more recently started staining for SEZ6 as well. And so we had this nice prospectively collected dataset with which to answer this question. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Excellent. And Alissa, could you try to go into some of the details around which patients you chose, how many patients, what was the approach that you selected to collect the data for this project? Dr. Alissa Cooper: This is perhaps a strength but also maybe a limitation of this dataset is, as Jesse alluded to, our pathology colleagues are really the stars of this paper here because we were lucky enough at MSK that they were really forethinking. They are absolute experts in the field and really forward-thinking people in terms of what information might be needed in the future to drive treatment decision-making. And so, as Jesse had said, small cell lung cancer tumor samples reflexively are stained for DLL3 and SEZ6 at MSK if there's enough tumor tissue. The other high-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas, those stains are performed upon physician request. And so that is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of the tumor samples we were able to include in this dataset because, you know, upon physician request depends on a number of factors, but actually at MSK, a number of physicians were requesting these stains to be done on their patients with high-grade neuroendocrine cancers of of other histologies. So we looked at all tumor samples with a diagnosis of high-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma of any histology that were stained for these two stains of interest. You know, I can let Jesse talk a bit more about the methodology. She was really the driver of this project. Dr. Jessica Ross: Yeah, sure. So we had 124 tumor samples total. All of those were stained for DLL3, and then a little less than half, 53, were stained for SEZ6. As Alissa said, they were from any primary site. So about half of them were of lung origin, that was the most common primary site, but we included GI tract, head and neck, GU, GYN, even a few tumors of unknown origin. And again, that's because I think a lot of these trials are basket trials that are including different high-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas no matter the primary site. And so we really felt like it was important to be more comprehensive and inclusive in this study. And then, methodologically, we also defined positivity in terms of staining of these two proteins as anything greater than or equal to 1% staining. There's really not a defined consensus of positivity when it comes to these two novel targets and staining for these two proteins. But in the Tarlatamab trials, for some of the correlative work that's been done, they use that 1% cutoff, and we just felt like being consistent with that and also using a sort of more pragmatic yes/no cutoff would be more helpful for this analysis. Dr. Alissa Cooper: And that was a point of discussion, actually. We had contemplated multiple different schemas, actually, for how to define thresholds of positivity. And I know you brought up that question before, what does it mean to be DLL3 positive or DLL3 high? I think you were alluding to prior that there was a presentation of obrixtamig looking at extra-pulmonary neuroendocrine carcinomas, and they actually divvied up the results between DLL3 50% or greater versus DLL3 low under 50%. And they actually did demonstrate differential efficacy certainly, but also some differential safety as well, which is very provocative and that kind of analysis has not been presented for other novel therapies as far as I'm aware. I could be wrong, but as far as I'm aware, that was sort of the first time that we saw a systematic presentation of considering patients to be, quote unquote, "high" or "low" in these sort of novel targets. I think it is important because the label for Tarlatamab does not require any DLL3 expression at all, actually. So it's not hinging upon DLL3 expression. They depend on the fact that the vast majority of small cell lung cancer tumors do express DLL3, 85% to 90% is what's been demonstrated in a few studies. And so, there's not prerequisite testing needed in that regard, but maybe for these extra-pulmonary, other histology neuroendocrine carcinomas, maybe it does matter to some degree. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Definitely agree that this evolving landscape of trying to understand whether an expression for something actually really does correlate with, whether it's an immune cell engager or an antibody-drug conjugate is a very evolving and dynamically moving space. And one of the questions that I was discussing with one of my friends was whether IHC positivity and the level of IHC positivity, as you've shown in one of those plots where you have double positive here on the right upper corner, you have the double negative towards the left lower, whether that somehow determines mRNA expression for DLL3. Obviously, that was not the question here that you were looking at, but it does kind of bring into question certain other aspects of correlations, expression versus IHC. Now going to the figures in this manuscript, very nicely done figures, very easy to understand because I've done the podcast for quite a bit now, and usually what I try to do first is go through the figures before I read the text, and and a lot of times it's hard to understand the figures without reading the text, but in your case, specifically the figures were very, very well done. Could you give us an overview, a quick overview of some of the important results, Jessica, as far as what you've highlighted in the manuscript? Dr. Jessica Ross: Sure. So I think the key takeaway is that, of the tumors in our cohort, the majority were positive for DLL3 and positive for SEZ6. So about 80% of them were positive for DLL3 and 80% were positive for SEZ6. About half of the tumors were stained for both proteins, and about 65% of those were positive as well. So I think if there's sort of one major takeaway, it's that when you're seeing a patient with a high-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma, the odds are that their tumor will express both of these proteins. And so that can sort of get your head thinking about what therapies they might be eligible for. And then we also did an analysis of some populations of interest. So for example, we know that non-neuroendocrine pathologies can transform into neuroendocrine tumors. And so we specifically looked at that subset of patients with transformed tumors, and those were also- the majority of them were positive, about three-quarters of them were positive for both of these two proteins. We looked at patients with brain met samples, again, about 70% were positive. And then I'd say the last sort of population of interest was we had a subset of 10 patients who had serial biopsies stained for either DLL3 or SEZ6 or both. In between the two samples, these patients were treated with chemotherapy. They were not treated with targeted therapy, but interestingly, in the majority of cases, the testing results were concordant, meaning if it was DLL3 positive to begin with, it tended to remain DLL3 positive after treatment. And so I think that's important as well as we think about, you know, a patient who maybe had DLL3 testing done before they received their induction chemo-IO, we can somewhat confidently say that they're probably still DLL3 positive after that treatment. And then finally, we did do a survival analysis among specifically the patients with lung neuroendocrine carcinomas. We looked at whether DLL3 expression affected progression-free survival on first-line platinum-etoposide, and then we looked at did it affect overall survival. And we found that it did not have an impact or the median progression-free survival was similar whether you were DLL3 positive or negative. But interestingly, with overall survival, we found that DLL3 positivity actually correlated with slightly improved overall survival. These were small numbers, and so, you know, I think we have to interpret this with caution, for sure, but it is interesting. I think there may be something to the fact that five of the patients who were DLL3 positive were treated with DLL3-targeting treatments. And so this made me think of, like in the breast cancer world, for example, if you have a patient with HER2-positive disease, it initially portended worse prognosis, more aggressive disease biology, but on the other hand, it opens the door for targeted treatments that actually now, at least with HER2-positive breast cancer, are associated with improved outcomes. And so I think that's one finding of interest as well. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Definitely proof-of-concept findings here that you guys have in the manuscript. Alissa, if I may ask you, what is the next important step for a project like this in your mind? Dr. Alissa Cooper: Jesse has highlighted a couple of key findings that we hope to move forward with future investigative studies, not necessarily in a real-world setting, but maybe even in clinical trial settings or in collaboration with sponsors. Are these biomarkers predictive? Are they prognostic? You know, those are still- we have some nascent data, data has been brewing, but I think that we we still don't have the answers to those open questions, which I think are critically important for determining not only clinical treatment decision-making, but also our ability to understand sequencing of therapies, prioritization of therapies. I think a prospective, forward-looking project, piggybacking on that paired biopsy, you know, we had a very small subset of patients with paired biopsies, but a larger subset or cohort looking at paired biopsies where we can see is there evolution of these IHC expression, even mRNA expression, as you're saying, is there differential there? Are there selection pressures to targeted therapies? Is there upregulation or downregulation of targets in response not just to chemotherapy, but for example, for other sort of ADCs or bi-specific T-cell engagers? I think those are going to be critically important future studies which are going to be a bit challenging to do, but really important to figure out this key clinical question of sequencing, which we're all contemplating in our clinics day in and day out. If you have a patient, and these patients often can be sick quite quickly, they might have one shot of what's the next treatment that you're going to pick. We can't guarantee that every patient is going to get to see every therapy. How can you help to sort of answer the question of like what should you offer? So I think that's the key question sort of underlying any future work is how predictive or prognostic are these biomarkers? What translational or correlative studies can we do on the tissue to understand clinical treatment decision-making? I think those are the key things that will unfold in the next couple of years. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: The last question for you, Alissa, that I have is, you are fairly early in your career, and you've accomplished quite a lot. One of the most important things that comes out from this manuscript is your mentorship for somebody who is a fellow and who led this project. For other junior investigators, early-career investigators, how did you do this? How did you manage to do this, and how did you mentor Jessica on this project with some of the lessons that you learned along the way, the good and other things that would perhaps help other listeners as they try to mentor residents, trainees, which is one of the important things of what we do in our daily routine? Dr. Alissa Cooper: I appreciate you calling me accomplished. Um, I'm not sure how true that is, but I appreciate that. I didn't have to do a whole lot with this project because Jesse is an extraordinarily smart, driven, talented fellow who came up with a lot of the clinical questions and a lot of the research questions as well. And so this project was definitely a collaborative project on both of our ends. But I think what was helpful from both of our perspectives is from my perspective, I could kind of see that this was a gap in the literature that really, I think, from my work leading clinical trials and from treating patients with these kinds of cancers that I really hoped to answer. And so when I came to Jessica with this idea as sort of a project to complete, she was very eager to take it and run with it and also make it her own. You know, in terms of early mentorship, I have to admit this was the first project that I mentored, so it was a great learning experience for me as well because as an early-career clinician and researcher, you're used to having someone else looking over your shoulder to tell you, "Yes, this is a good journal target, here's what we can anticipate reviewers are going to say, here are other key collaborators we should include." Those kind of things about a project that don't always occur to you as you're sort of first starting out. And so all of that experience for me to be identifying those more upper-level management sort of questions was a really good learning experience for me. And of course, I was fantastically lucky to have a partner in Jesse, who is just a rising star. Dr. Jessica Ross: Thank you. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Well, excellent. It sounds like the first of many other mentorship opportunities to come for you, Alissa. And Jessica, congratulations on your next step of joining and being faculty, hopefully, where you're training. Thank you again, both of you. This was very insightful. I definitely learned a lot after I reviewed the manuscript and read the manuscript. Hopefully, our listeners will feel the same. Perhaps we'll have more of your work being published in JCO PO subsequently. Dr. Alissa Cooper: Hope so. Thank you very much for the opportunity to chat today. Dr. Jessica Ross: Yes, thank you. This was great. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Thank you for listening to JCO Precision Oncology Conversations. Don't forget to give us a rating or review and be sure to subscribe so as you never miss an episode. You can find all ASCO shows at asco.org/podcasts. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Disclosures: Dr. Alissa Jamie Cooper Honoraria Company: MJH Life Scienes, Ideology Health, Intellisphere LLC, MedStar Health, Physician's Education Resource, LLC, Gilead Sciences, Regeneron, Daiichi Sankyo/Astra Zeneca, Novartis, Research Funding: Merck, Roche, Monte Rosa Therapeutics, Abbvie, Amgen, Daiichi Sankyo/Astra Zeneca Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Gilead Sciences
John Rossman the Managing Partner and Founder of Rossman Partners. He is a business strategist, operator, and expert on digital transformation, leadership, and business reinvention. He has consulted with many great brands including Novartis, Fidelity Investments, Microsoft, Walmart, and Nordstrom. He served as senior innovation advisor at T-Mobile and senior technology advisor to the Gates Foundation. He is an operator and builder whose love is diving into business problems and customer needs designing solutions and business opportunities. EXPERIENCE Former Amazon Executive Responsible for the launching and scaling the merchant integration team and played a key role in launching and scaling the Amazon marketplace business, which is now over 50% of all units sold at Amazon.com. Also responsible for the enterprise services business with responsibilities for Toys R Us, Target.com, NBA.com and other great brands. Media Analyst Sought after expert commentary regarding Amazon as interviewed by New York Times, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, BBC, Geekwire and many others. Author Author of Big Bet Leadership: Your Transformation Playbook for Winning in the Hyper Digital Era. Releases Feb 27, 2024. Author of Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader. Author of The Amazon Way on IoT: 10 Principles for Every Leader from the World's Leading Internet of Things Strategies. Author of The Amazon Way: Amazon's 14 Leadership Principles. Assignments - Interim chief technology officer for the Gates Foundation - Innovation advisor to T-mobile - Interim CIO for a national retailer Speaker Keynote speaker on innovation, leadership and digital transformation. John leads workshops on a wide variety of innovation, internet of things, digital strategy, and creating a culture of agility, trial and error, scaling and accountability. His goal is to give audiences tools they can immediately use to operate differently. Advisor Rossman Partners helps it's clients compete and win in the digital era. I work with my clients to both define strategy and create change for the organization. Bringing a broad range of expertise and trusted partners to the table, I first listen and understand, and then help create a customized approach for your situation.
This live event was recorded on November 17 at the Mattamy Athletic Centre. Hosted by Rubicon Strategy and made possible by our event sponsors Bruce Power, Enbridge Gas, Novartis, Toronto Metropolitan University and the Mattamy Athletic Centre.__Curse of Politics was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, the Canadian Climate Institute, Interac, and Unsmoke Canada.David Herle, Scott Reid, Jordan Leichnitz, and Kory Teneycke provide insights on the latest in Canadian politics.Thank you for joining us on #CurseOfPolitics. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.Watch conversations from Curse of Politics via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.
En este episodio de Value Investing FM, Adrián y Paco tenemos el placer de entrevistar a Juan Carlos Acitores Peñafiel, de Acifiel Sicav. Nos explicará por qué empezó a invertir, qué le atrajo del mundo de la inversión, cuál es su estilo de inversión y cómo ha evolucionado, cuáles son sus fondos e inversores de referencia y cuál es la lección más importante que ha aprendido como inversor. Repasaremos algunos de sus errores y tesis de inversión por sectores: Sector farma: Sanofi, Novartis y Roche Oil: BP y Total Energies Bebidas alcohólicas: AB InBev Ropa deportiva: Adidas y Puma Consumo: Unilever Autos: BMW, Stellantis, Renault, Volkswagen
Send us a textGood morning from Pharma Daily: the podcast that brings you the most important developments in the pharmaceutical and biotech world. Today, we're diving into several groundbreaking advancements and strategic shifts in the industry that promise to reshape the landscape of patient care and therapeutic innovations.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has introduced a novel regulatory pathway aimed at expediting the approval process for custom gene-editing therapies. Articulated by FDA officials Vinay Prasad, M.D., and Martin Makary, M.D., this new approach is set to revolutionize personalized medicine, particularly for genetic disorders where tailored interventions are crucial. Gene editing technologies, like CRISPR-Cas9, have opened unprecedented avenues for addressing genetic conditions directly at their source. However, the regulatory framework has struggled to keep pace with these advances, often hampering innovation with lengthy and complex approval processes.This proposed pathway seeks to streamline these requirements by adopting a risk-based assessment model that considers the unique properties of gene-editing therapies. Unlike traditional drugs, which follow a uniform clinical trial path, gene-editing treatments require a more nuanced regulatory approach due to their precision and potential off-target effects. The framework emphasizes adaptive trial designs—allowing for modifications based on interim results—and integrates real-world data to create a dynamic regulatory process. This not only promises faster development times but also fosters innovation by making it easier for companies to bring cutting-edge therapies to market.The implications are far-reaching. For researchers and biotech firms, this represents a chance to reduce time-to-market significantly while maintaining high safety standards. It also sets a precedent for future regulatory models that prioritize patient-centric approaches, acknowledging the diverse genetic landscapes of individuals with rare diseases. On a broader scale, this shift underscores the increasing recognition of personalized medicine's potential to transform healthcare delivery.In parallel developments, Gilead Sciences has achieved positive phase 3 results for its single-tablet regimen combining bictegravir and lenacapavir for HIV treatment. This milestone offers hope for simplifying treatment protocols for patients currently on multi-tablet regimens, potentially enhancing adherence and improving health outcomes. Gilead's preparation for regulatory filings marks an essential step forward in their therapeutic portfolio.Turning to cancer treatment advancements, Kyowa Kirin's collaboration with Kura Oncology has led to FDA approval for an oral medication targeting a subset of acute myeloid leukemia patients. This approval highlights the power of strategic partnerships in expediting the development of targeted cancer therapies and brings new hope to patients with limited treatment options.Meanwhile, several pharmaceutical companies, including Fresenius, Sun Pharma, and Teva, have been involved in product recalls ranging from hospital drugs to antibiotics and ADHD medications. These recalls underscore ongoing challenges in maintaining drug safety standards and emphasize the need for rigorous quality control measures across the industry.Zealand Pharma has opted to pause development of its dual GLP-1/GLP-2 agonist, dapiglutide, due to an increasingly crowded metabolic disorder treatment landscape. By reallocating resources towards programs with greater clinical differentiation potential, Zealand reflects broader industry trends prioritizing investments in areas with clearer paths to market success.In malaria treatment advances, Novartis has achieved significant progress with its next-generation drug 'Ganlum,Support the show
Aos 32 anos, Roberta passou pelo maior susto da sua vida: no meio da correria para levar a filha pequena à natação, ela infartou. Mas não foi rápido assim. Antes de sair de casa, Roberta sentiu um soco no peito, o braço formigando, a respiração falhando… Chegando no hospital, ouviu de uma médica que “não era nada”, quase foi medicada e liberada. Até que o chefe da emergência interveio, reconhecendo o infarto. Ela lembra da escuridão chegando e de repetir em pensamento: “Deus, não me leva agora, eu quero ver minha filha crescer.” Roberta ficou internada no CTI, o diagnóstico foi duro: artéria principal 100% obstruída, colesterol alto, risco genético. E ela só tinha 32 anos!O maior sofrimento, porém, não foi a dor no peito, mas a ausência. Roberta perdeu a festa junina da filha e, dias depois, passou o aniversário da pequena no hospital. Chorava pedindo que cuidassem da menina, enquanto tentava controlar a pressão que não baixava. Sobreviveu, mas carregou a culpa: e se tivesse se cuidado antes?Roberta dormia pouco, se alimentava mal, não fazia exercícios e carregava o peso das contas e da responsabilidade pela mãe idosa. Até que o corpo cobrou.Com o tempo, transformou culpa em mudança. Reaprendeu a viver com mais leveza: alimentação regrada, exercícios, terapia para lidar com o trauma. Um ano e meio depois, engravidou novamente, em uma gestação de alto risco, mas que lhe deu mais uma filha. Hoje, diz que ama ainda mais a vida, que valoriza o simples, da água caindo no chuveiro a um abraço apertado.Roberta sabe que teve sorte. Por isso, deixa um recado: qualquer sinal diferente no corpo merece atenção. Infarto não é só coisa de gente mais velha. Cuidar de si é também uma forma de cuidar de quem se ama.A história da Roberta é uma parceria do Histórias de ter.a.pia com a Novartis para a campanha #OVilãoDoSeuCoração para conscientização dos perigos do colesterol ruim. Saiba mais sobre o Vilão do Coração em saude.novartis.com.br/vilaodocoracao/.#OVilaoDoSeuCoracao #SaúdeCardiovascular #Prevenção #ControleDoColesterol #CuideDoSeuCoração #PubliNovartis BR-36280
Comment on the Show by Sending Mark a Text Message.This episode is part of my initiative to provide access to important court decisions impacting employees in an easy to understand conversational format using AI. The speakers in the episode are AI generated and frankly sound great to listen to. Enjoy!Headlines rarely explain how discrimination actually works; the paperwork does. We take you inside a sweeping class action against Novartis where plaintiffs alleged a nationwide pattern of gender bias driven less by explicit rules and more by subjective decisions about promotions, performance reviews, and discipline. As we unpack the filings, we surface the mechanics that matter: a management development program that functioned as a gate, shifting criteria that discounted strong results, assignment patterns that boosted some careers and stalled others, and a hostile culture that complaints allegedly failed to correct.We ground the big picture in human stories. Amy Velez's strong sales numbers met an MDP denial and rapid discipline after FMLA leave, while a male partner avoided similar consequences. Sonia Klinger's contested review hinged on a narrow sales window shaped by denied resources, followed by lost raises and stock options. Manel Heider Tabertka's national performance didn't translate into advancement access; a male peer's did. Michelle Williams described communications about advancement that quieted once she disclosed her pregnancy, plus a reduced raise processed during maternity leave without consent. Together, these narratives illustrate how subjective frameworks can override merit and reframe protected leave as a liability.We also examine the remedies sought: not just damages, but court-ordered structural change across promotions, transfers, training, evaluations, compensation, and discipline, monitored by an equality task force. That request raises a critical governance question for any large employer: when internal policies fail to prevent systemic bias, how far should external oversight go? Our takeaways center on building systems that stand up to scrutiny—clear advancement criteria, calibrated reviews, transparent metrics, and independent audits that close the gap between policy and practice.If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague who cares about fair workplaces, and leave a review with your answer to one question: should courts mandate HR reform when companies don't fix it themselves? If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review will inform other listeners you found the content on this podcast is important in the area of employment law in the United States. For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.
Audio roundup of selected biopharma industry content from Scrip over the business week ended November 1, 2025. In this episode: Pfizer's unwavering pursuit of Metsera; Lilly's obesity momentum; Merck & Co.'s MFN negotiations; Novartis's promising Sjögren's results; and the rising Chinese pressure on US innovation. Story links: https://insights.citeline.com/scrip/podcasts/scrips-five-must-know-things/quick-listen-scrips-five-must-know-things-2K33BM6BLBDU7JH7QMETUXUKPE/ This episode was produced with the help of AI text-to-voice and voice emulation tools. Playlist: soundcloud.com/citelinesounds/sets/scrips-five-must-know-things
Dr. Pedro Barata and Dr. Aditya Bagrodia discuss the evolving landscape of testicular cancer survivorship, the impact of treatment-related complications, and management strategies to optimize long-term outcomes and quality of life. TRANSCRIPT: Dr. Pedro Barata: Hello and welcome to By the Book, a podcast series from ASCO that features engaging conversations between editors and authors of the ASCO Educational Book. I'm Dr. Pedro Barata. I'm a medical oncologist at University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center and associate professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm also an associate editor of the ASCO Educational Book. We all know that testicular cancer is a rare but highly curable malignancy that mainly affects young men. Multimodal advances in therapy have resulted in excellent cancer specific survival, but testicular cancer survivors face significant long term treatment related toxicities which affect their quality of life and require surveillance and management. With that, I'm very happy today to be joined by Dr. Aditya Bagrodia, a urologic oncologist, professor, and the GU Disease Team lead at UC San Diego[KI1] Health, and also the lead author of the recently published paper in the ASCO Educational Book titled, "Key Updates in Testicular Cancer: Optimizing Survivorship and Survival." And he's also the host of the world-renowned BackTable Urology Podcast. Dr. Bagrodia, I'm so happy that you're joining us today. Welcome. Dr. Aditya Bagrodia: Thanks, Pedro. Absolutely a pleasure to be here. Really appreciate the opportunity. Dr. Pedro Barata: Absolutely. So, just to say that our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode. Let's get things started. I'm really excited to talk about this. I'm biased, I do treat testicular cancer among other GU malignancies and so it's a really, really important topic that we face every day, right? Fortunately, for most of these patients, we're able to cure them. But it always comes up the question, "What now? You know, scans, management, cardio oncology, what survivorship programs we have in place? Are we addressing the different survivorship piece, psychology, fertility, et cetera?" So, we'll try to capture all of that today. Aditya, congrats again, you did a fantastic job putting together the insights and thoughts and what we know today about this important topic. And so, let's get focused specifically about what happens when patients get cured. So, many of us, in many centers, were fortunate enough to have these survivorship programs together, but I find that sometimes from talking to colleagues, they're not exactly the same thing and they don't mean the same thing to different people, to different institutions, right? So, first things first. What do you tell a patient perhaps when they ask you, "What can happen to me now that I'm done with treatment for testicular cancer?" Whether it's chemotherapy or just surgery or even radiation therapy? "So, what about the long term? What should I expect, Doctor, that might happen to me in the long run?" Dr. Aditya Bagrodia: Totally. I mean, I think that question's really front and center, Pedro, and really appreciate you all highlighting this topic. It was an absolute honor to work with true thought leaders and the survivorship bit of it is front and center, in my opinion. It's really the focus, you know, we, generally speaking should be able to cure these young men, but it's the 10, 15, 20 years down the way that they're going to largely contend with. The conversation really begins at diagnosis, pre-education. Fortunately, the bulk of patients that present are those with stage one disease, and even very basic things like before orchiectomy, talking about a prosthetic; we know that that can impact body image and self esteem, whether or not they decide to receive it or not. Actually, just being offered a prosthetic is important and this is something, you know, for any urologist, it's kind of critical. To discussing fertility elements to this, taking your time to examine the contralateral testicle, ask about fertility problems, issues, concerns, offer sperm banking, even in the context of a completely normal contralateral testicle, I think these things are quite important. So if it's somebody with stage one disease, you know, without going too far down discussing adjuvant therapy and so forth, I will start the conversation with, "You know, the testes do largely two things. They make testosterone and they make sperm." By and large, patients are going to be able to have acceptable levels of testosterone, adequate sperm parameters to maintain kind of a normal gonadal state and to naturally conceive, should that be something they're interested in. However, there's still going to be, depending on what resource you look at, somewhere in the order of 10-30% that are going to have issues. Where I think for the stage one patients, it's really incumbent upon us is actually to not wait for them to discuss their concerns, particularly with testosterone, which many times can be a little bit vague, but to proactively ask about it every time. Libido, erectile quality, muscle mass maintenance, energy, fatigue. All of these are kind of associated symptoms of hypogonadism. But for a lot of kids 18-20 years old, it's going to be something insidious that they don't think about. So, for the stage one patients, it absolutely starts with gonadal function. If they are stage two getting surgery, I think the counseling really needs to center around a possibility for ejaculatory dysfunction. Now, for a chemotherapy-naive, nerve-sparing RPLND, generally these days we should be able to preserve ejaculatory function at high volume centers, but you still want to bring that up and again kind of touch base on thinking about sperm banking and so forth before the operation, scars, those are things I think worth talking about, small risk of ascites. Then, I think the intensity of potential long term adverse effects really ramps up when we're talking about systemic therapy, chemotherapy. And then there's of course some radiation therapy specific elements that come up. So, for the chemotherapy bits of it, I really think this is going to be something that can be a complete multi-system affected intervention. So, anxiety, depression, our group has actually shown using some population resources that even suicidality can be increased among patients that have been treated for germ cell tumor. You know, really from the top down, tinnitus, hearing changes, those are things that we need to ask about at every appointment. Neuropathy, sexual health, that we kind of talked about, including ED (erectile dysfunction), vertigo, dizziness, Raynaud's phenomenon, these are kind of more the symptoms that I think we need to inquire about every time. And what we do here and I think at a lot of survivorship programs is use kind of a battery of validated instruments, germ cell tumor specific, platinum treated patient specific. So we use a combination of EORTC questions and PROMIS questions, which actually serves as like a review of systems for the patient, also as a research element. We review that and then depending on what might be going on, we can dig into that further, get them over to colleagues in audiology or psychology, et cetera. And then of course, screening for the hypertension, hyperlipidemia, metabolic syndrome with basically you or myself or somebody kind of like us serving, many times it's the role of the PCP, just making sure we're checking out, you know, CBC, CMP, et cetera, lipid parameters to screen for those kind of cardiac associated issues along with secondary malignancies. Dr. Pedro Barata: So that's super comprehensive and thorough. Thank you so much. Actually, I love how you break it down in a simple way. Two functions of the testes, produce testosterone and then, you know, the problem related to that is the hypogonadism, and then the second, as you mentioned, produce sperm and of course related to the fertility issues with that. So, let's start with the first one that you mentioned. So, you do cite that in your paper, around 5-10% of men end up getting, developing hypogonadism, maybe clinical when they present with symptoms, maybe subclinical. So, I'm wondering, for our audience, what kind of recommendations we would give for addressing that or kind of thinking of that? How often are you ordering those tests? And then, when you're thinking about testosterone replacement therapy, is that something you do immediately or are there any guidelines into context that? How do you approach that? Dr. Aditya Bagrodia: So, just a bit more on digging into it even in terms of the questions to ask, you know, "Do you have any decrease in sexual drive? Any erectile dysfunction? Are your morning erections still taking place? Has the ejaculate volume changed? Physically, muscle mass, strength? Have you been putting on weight? Have you noticed increase in body fat?" And sometimes this is complicated because there's some anxiety that comes along with a cancer diagnosis when you're 20, 30 years old, multifactorial, hair loss, hot flashes, irritability. Sometimes they'll, you know, literally they'll say, "You know, my significant other or partners noticed that I'm really just a little bit labile." So I think, you know, there's the symptoms and then checking, usually kind of a gonadal panel, FSH, LH, free and total testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin, that's going to be typically pretty comprehensive. So if you've got symptoms plus some laboratory work, and ideally that pre-orchiectomy testosterone gives you some delta. If they started out at an 800, 900, now they're 400, that might be a big change for them. And then, when you talk about TRT (Testosterone Replacement Therapy) recommendations, you know, Pedro, yourself, myself, we're kind of lucky to be at academic centers and we've got men's health colleagues that are ultra experts, but at a high level, I would say that a lot of the TRT options center around fertility goals. Exogenous testosterone treats the low T, but it does suppress gonadal function, including spermatogenesis. So if that's not a priority, they can just get TRT. It should be done under the care of a urologist, a men's health, an endocrinologist, where we're checking liver chemistries and CBCs and a PSA and so forth. If they're interested in fertility preservation, then I would say engaging an endocrinologist, men's health expert is important. There's medications even like hCG, Clomid, which works centrally and stimulate the gonadal access. Niche scenarios where they might want standard TRT now, and then down the way, 5, 7 years, they're thinking about coming off of that for fertility purposes, I think that's really where you want to have an expert involved because there's quite a bit of nuance there in recovery of actual spermatogenesis and so forth. To kind of summarize, you got to ask about it. Checking it is, is not overly complicated. We do a baseline pre-orchiectomy and at least once annually, you can tag it in with the tumor markers, so it's not an extra blood draw. And if they have symptoms of course, kind of developed, then we'll move that up in the evaluation. Dr. Pedro Barata: Got it. And you also touch base on the fertility angle, which is truly important. And I'm just curious, you know, a lot of times many of us might see one, two patients a year, right, and we forget these protocols and what we've got to do about that. And so I'm interested to hear your thoughts about when you think about fertility, and how proactive you get. In other words, who do you refer for the fertility clinic, for a fertility preservation program? You know, do all cases despite getting through orchiectomy or just the cases that you're going to, you know you're going to seek chemotherapy at some point? What kind of selection or it depends on the chemo, like how do you do that assessment about the referral for preservation program that you might have available at UCSD? Dr. Aditya Bagrodia: Yeah, I mean I feel really fortunate to sit on the NCCN Testis Cancer Guidelines. It's in there that fertility counseling should be discussed prior to orchiectomy. So 100% bring it up. If there are risk factors, undescended testicles, previous history of fertility concerns, atrophic contralateral testicle, anything on the ultrasound like microlithiasis in the contralateral testicle, you kind of wanna get it there. And then again, there's kind of niche scenarios where you're really worried, maybe get a semen analysis and it doesn't look that good, arrange for the time of orchiectomy to have onco-testicular sperm extraction from the, quote unquote, "normal" testis parenchyma. You know, I think you have to be kind of prepared to go that route and really make sure you're doing this completely comprehensively. So pre-orchiectomy all patients. Don't really push for it too hard if they've got a contralateral testicle, if they've had no issues having children. There's some cost associated with this, sperm banking still isn't kind of covered even in the context of men with cancer. If they've got risk factors, absolutely pre-orchiectomy. Pre-RPLND, even though the rates of ejaculatory dysfunction at a high-volume center should be low single digits, I'll still offer it. That'd be a real catastrophe if they were in that small proportion of patients and now they're going to be reliant on things like intrauterine insemination, where it becomes quite expensive. Pre-chemo, everybody. That's basically a standard these days where it should be discussed and it's kind of amazing currently, even if you don't have an accessible men's health fertility clinic, there are actually companies, I have no vested interest, Fellow is one such company where you can actually create an account, receive a FedEx semen analysis and cryopreservation kit, send it back in, and all CLIA certified, it's based out of California. The gentleman that runs it, is a urologist and very, very bright guy who's done a lot of great stuff for testis cancer. So, even for patients that are kind of in extremis at the hospital that kind of need to get going like yesterday, we still discuss it. We've got some mechanisms in place to either have them take a semen analysis over to our Men's Health clinic or send it off to Fellow, which I think is pretty cool and that even extends to some of our younger adolescent patients where going to a clinic and providing a sample might be tricky. So, I think bringing it up every stage, anytime there's an intervention that might be offered, orchiectomy, chemo, surgery, radiation, it's kind of incumbent on us to discuss it. Dr. Pedro Barata: Gotcha. That's super helpful. And you also touch base on another angle, which is the psychosocial angle around this. You mentioned suicidal rates, you mentioned anxiety, perhaps depression in some cases as well as chronic fatigue, not necessarily just because of the low testosterone that you can get, but also from a psychological perspective. I'm curious, what do the recommendations look like for that? Do these patients need to see a social worker or a psychologist, or do they need to answer a screening test every time they come to see us and then based on that, we kind of escalate, take the next steps according to that? Do they see a psychologist perhaps every so often? How should that be managed and addressed? Dr. Aditya Bagrodia: It's an excellent question and again, these can be rather insidious symptoms where if you don't really dig in and inquire, they can be glossed over. I mean, how easy to say, "Your markers look okay, your scans look okay. See you in six months," and keep it kind of brief. First off, I think bringing it up proactively and normalizing it, that, "This may be something that you experience. Many people do, you're not alone, there's nothing kind of wrong with you." I also think that this is an area where support groups can be incredibly useful. We host the Testicular Cancer Awareness Foundation support group here. They'll talk about chemo brain or just like a little bit of an adjustment disorder after their diagnosis. Support groups, I think are critical. As I mentioned, we have a survivorship program that's led by a combination of our med oncs, myself on the uro-onc side, as well as APPs, where we are systematically asking about essentially the whole litany of issues that may arise, including psychosocial, anxiety, depression, suicidality. And we've got a nice kind of fast path into our cancer center support services for these young men to meet with a psychologist. If that isn't going to be sufficient, they can actually see a psychiatrist to discuss medications and so forth. I do think that we've got to screen for these because, as anticipated from diagnosis, those first 2 years, we see a rise. But even 10, 15 years out, we note, compared to controls, that there is an increased level of anxiety, depression, suicidality that might not just take place at that initial acute period of diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Pedro Barata: Really well said. Super important. So I guess if I were to put all these together, with these really amazing advances in technology, we all know AI, some of us might be more or less aware of biomarkers coming up, including microRNA for example, and others, like as I think of all these potential long term complications for these patients, look at the future, I guess, can we use this as a way to deescalate treatment where it's not really necessary, as a way to actually prevent some of these complications? Like, how do we see where we're heading? As we manage testicular cancer, let's say, within the next 5 or 10 years, do you think there's something coming up that's going to be different from what we're doing things today? Dr. Aditya Bagrodia: Totally. I mean, I think it's as exciting as a time as there's ever been, you know, maybe notwithstanding circa 1970s when platinum was discovered. So microRNAs, which you mentioned, you know, there's a new candidate biomarker, microRNA-371. We are super excited here at UCSD. We actually have it CLIA-certified available in our lab and are ordering these tests for patients kind of in their acute stage, you know, stage one and surveillance, stage two, post-RPLND, receiving chemotherapy. And essentially this is a universal germ cell tumor specific biomarker, except for teratoma, suffice it to say 90% sensitive and specific. And I think it's going to change the way that we diagnose and manage patients. You know, pre-orchiectomy, that's pretty straightforward. Post-orchiectomy, maybe we can really decrease the number of CT scans that are done. Maybe we can identify those patients that basically have occult disease where we can intervene early, either with RPLND or single cycle chemo. Post-RPLND, identify the patients who are at higher risk of relapse that may benefit from some adjuvant therapy. In the advanced setting, look at marker decline for patients in addition to standard tumor markers. Can we modulate their systemic therapy? So, the international interest is largely on modifying things. There's really cool clinical trials that we have for stage one patients, that treatment would be prescribed based on a post-orchiectomy microRNA. I think the microRNAs are really exciting. Teratoma remains an outstanding question. I think this is where maybe ctDNA, perhaps some radiomics and advanced imaging processing and incorporating AI may allow us to safely avoid a lot of these post-chemo RPLNDs. And then identification using SNPs and so forth of who might be most susceptible to some of the cardiac toxicity, autotoxicity and personalizing things in that way as well. Dr. Pedro Barata: Super exciting, right, what's about to come? And I agree with you, I think it's going to change dramatically how we manage this disease. This has been a pleasure sitting down with you. I guess before letting you go, anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up? Dr. Aditya Bagrodia: Yeah, first off, again, just want to thank you and ASCO for the opportunity. And it's easy enough to, I think, approach a patient with the testicular germ cell tumor as, "This is an easy case. We're just going to do whatever we've done. Go to the guidelines that says do X, Y, or Z." But there's so much more nuance to it than that. Getting it done perfectly, I think, is mandatory. Whatever we do is an impact on them for the next 50, 60, 70 years of their life. And I found the germ cell tumor community, people are really passionate about it. If you're ever uncertain, there's experts throughout the country and internationally. Ask somebody before you do something that you can't undo. I think we owe it to them to get it perfect so that we can really maximize the survivorship and the survival like we've been talking about. Dr. Pedro Barata: Aditya, thanks for sharing your fantastic insights with us on this podcast. Dr. Aditya Bagrodia: All right, Pedro. Fantastic. Appreciate the opportunity. Dr. Pedro Barata: And also, thank you to our listeners for your time today. I actually encourage you to check out Dr. Bagrodia's article in the 2025 ASCO Educational Book. We'll post a link to the paper in the show notes. Remember, it's free access online, and you can actually download it as well as a PDF. You can also find on the website a wealth of other great papers from the ASCO Educational Book on key advances and novel approaches that are shaping modern oncology. So with that, thank you everyone. Thank you, Aditya, one more time, for joining us. Thank you, have a good day. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Follow today's speakers: Dr. Pedro Barata @PBarataMD Dr. Aditya Bagrodia @AdityaBagrodia Follow ASCO on social media: @ASCO on X (formerly Twitter) ASCO on Bluesky ASCO on Facebook ASCO on LinkedIn Disclosures: Dr. Pedro Barata: Stock and Other Ownership Interests: Luminate Medical Honoraria: UroToday Consulting or Advisory Role: Bayer, BMS, Pfizer, EMD Serono, Eisai, Caris Life Sciences, AstraZeneca, Exelixis, AVEO, Merck, Ipson, Astellas Medivation, Novartis, Dendreon Speakers' Bureau: AstraZeneca, Merck, Caris Life Sciences, Bayer, Pfizer/Astellas Research Funding (Inst.): Exelixis, Blue Earth, AVEO, Pfizer, Merck Dr. Aditya Bagrodia: Consulting or Advisory Role: Veracyte, Ferring
This episode covers: Cardiology this Week: A concise summary of recent studies Lp(a) - What to expect in the very near future Myocardial infarction in older and frail adults Mythbusters: is beetroot good for your heart? Host: Rick Grobbee Guests: JP Carpenter, Vijay Kunadian, Erik Stroes Want to watch that episode? Go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2177 Want to watch that extended interview on Lp(a), go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2177?resource=interview Disclaimer ESC TV Today is supported by Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis through an independent funding. The programme has not been influenced in any way by its funding partners. This programme is intended for health care professionals only and is to be used for educational purposes. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) does not aim to promote medicinal products nor devices. Any views or opinions expressed are the presenters' own and do not reflect the views of the ESC. The ESC is not liable for any translated content of this video. The English language always prevails. Declarations of interests Stephan Achenbach, Yasmina Bououdina, Rick Grobbee, Nicolle Kraenkel, Vijay Kunadian and Erik Stroes have declared to have no potential conflicts of interest to report. Carlos Aguiar has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: personal fees for consultancy and/or speaker fees from Abbott, AbbVie, Alnylam, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, BiAL, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Daiichi-Sankyo, Ferrer, Gilead, GSK, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi, Servier, Takeda, Tecnimede. John-Paul Carpenter has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: stockholder MyCardium AI. Davide Capodanno has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: Bristol Myers Squibb, Daiichi Sankyo, Sanofi Aventis, Novo Nordisk, Terumo. Konstantinos Koskinas has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: honoraria from MSD, Daiichi Sankyo, Sanofi. Steffen Petersen has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: consultancy for Circle Cardiovascular Imaging Inc. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Emma Svennberg has declared to have potential conflicts of interest to report: Abbott, Astra Zeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers, Squibb-Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson.
Host: Rick Grobbee Guest: Erik Stroes Want to watch that extended interview on Lp(a), go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2177?resource=interview Want to watch that episode? Go to: https://esc365.escardio.org/event/2177 Disclaimer: ESC TV Today is supported by Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis through an independent funding. The programme has not been influenced in any way by its funding partners. This programme is intended for health care professionals only and is to be used for educational purposes. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) does not aim to promote medicinal products nor devices. Any views or opinions expressed are the presenters' own and do not reflect the views of the ESC. The ESC is not liable for any translated content of this video. The English language always prevails. Declarations of interests: Rick Grobbee and Erik Stroes have declared to have no potential conflicts of interest to report.
On this episode of #TheShot of #DigitalHealth Therapy, Jim Joyce and I had the pleasure of chatting with the globally minded and endlessly curious Alette Ramos Hunt, PhD, Global Director, Digital Innovation & AI for Drug Discovery at Novartis. From being a third culture kid (Danish dad, Filipino mom, born in Japan, raised in Hong Kong) to becoming one of the sharpest voices connecting biotech, digital health, and AI, Alette brings perspective that's as international as it is insightful. We explored her fascinating path from studying proteins in Glasgow to driving AI innovation in pharma, and how she's bridging the gap between molecules, humans, and machines. She reminded us that practical AI and game-changing AI both have a place - one makes us efficient, the other makes us dream bigger. It's an episode filled with humility, humor, and yes.. human intelligence - proving that even in a world of algorithms, empathy still leads the way. Fun mentions as always: Chandana Fitzgerald Jeff Weness Milind Kamkolkar [00:00-02:00] Bloopers, sunshine, and background banter. [00:03-05:00] Alette's third-culture upbringing — Japan, Hong Kong, Denmark. [00:05-07:00] Boarding school, biochemistry, and falling in love with proteins. [00:10-12:00] From academia to Pfizer — bringing science to life. [00:13-15:00] Leap to HealthXL — discovering digital health beyond the lab. [00:18-21:00] Entering Novartis — pre-ChatGPT AI strategy and innovation cycles. [00:22-25:00] Practical AI vs. game-changing AI — redefining productivity. [00:24-28:00] AI and drug discovery — startups, partnerships, and collaboration. [00:29-34:00] Lessons on open-minded leadership and partnering with purpose. [00:36-39:00] Jim's classic closing story and Alette's advice: Value your strengths, cherish your partners.
Audio roundup of selected biopharma industry content from Scrip over the business week ended October 31, 2025. In this episode: third quarter dealmaking picks up; Novartis still has M&A firepower even after Avidity acquisition; Hanmi's obesity contender shows Phase III promise; NVIDIA partnership progresses Lilly's AI plans; and Lilly builds gene therapy push with Adverum buy. Story links: https://insights.citeline.com/scrip/podcasts/scrips-five-must-know-things/quick-listen-scrips-five-must-know-things-MQMX2YHSAVHBTJFR4RAEAYNFNQ/ This episode was produced with the help of AI text-to-voice and voice emulation tools. Playlist: soundcloud.com/citelinesounds/sets/scrips-five-must-know-things
Today's guest is Scott Bradley, VP of AI and Innovation at Novartis. As the eighth largest pharmaceutical company in the world by revenue, Novartis' medicines reach millions of people worldwide. Their focus on the discovery and development of novel, breakthrough treatments sees them reimagining not just the delivery of said treatments, but the practice of medicine at large. Scott joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to examine how artificial intelligence is transforming trial design, operations, and patient engagement — while also reshaping industry trust and accountability. Want to share your AI adoption story with executive peers? Click emerj.com/expert2 for more information and to be a potential future guest on the ‘AI in Business' podcast!
Novartis' biggest deal in more than a decade gives the Swiss pharma three programs for muscular dystrophies that are close to the finish line. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury's analysts discuss the $12 billion deal for Avidity in the context of Novartis' recent acquisitions and the antibody-oligonucleotide conjugate platform it is gaining.The team dives into RNA versus DNA modalities, noting antisense and siRNA approaches appear to be gaining traction with major pharmas as traditional gene therapy and gene editing approaches hit rocky times. Still, they note hopeful progress among base editing therapies given the promising early track records of over a dozen base editors in the clinic. They also discuss BioCentury's conversation with base editing inventor David Liu; Alkermes' $2.1 billion acquisition of Avadel; and β-catenin data from Parabilis. This episode of BioCentury This Week is sponsored by Evotec.View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/657412#AntibodyOligonucleotideConjugates #RNAtherapeutics #BaseEditing #MuscularDystrophy #WntPathway #BetaCatenin #Orexin2Receptor #PrecisionMedicine00:01 - Sponsor Message: Evotec 02:04 - 12th China Healthcare Summit08:11 - Novartis' $12B Deal16:58 - Alkermes M&A20:01 - David Liu Base Editing25:02 - Parabilis' DataTo submit a question to BioCentury's editors, email the BioCentury This Week team at podcasts@biocentury.com.Reach us by sending a text
The real challenge for today's HR leaders isn't adopting AI, but ensuring people still feel seen, heard, and valued in a world shaped by it. Today's CHROs face a powerful question: how can we design organizations that are as human as they are high-performing? At Novartis, this challenge sparked a bold rethink of what it means to lead, grow, and belong. In this episode, Rob Kowalski, Chief People and Organization Officer at Novartis, shares how the company is reimagining HR through human-centered experiences that transform culture into a living system. He unpacks Novartis' Inspired, Curious, and Unbossed culture framework, the "behaviors in action" that make culture discussable, and programs like Future Me that redefine career growth through lattices instead of ladders. Rob also explores how storytelling connects every employee—scientists to HR teams—to patient impact, why leaders must balance empowerment with accountability, and how "unbossed" leadership is reshaping management itself. From AI coaching tools to redefining what growth and retention really mean, this conversation gives CHROs a fresh blueprint for building organizations that are truly human by design. ________________ Start your day with the world's top leaders by joining thousands of others at Great Leadership on Substack. Just enter your email: https://greatleadership.substack.com/
US equity futures are indicating a higher open today. Europe markets have opened higher in early trades. And Asian markets have wrapped up the day higher almost everywhere as trade tensions around the world eased significantly. US and China finalized an outline trade agreement on Sunday, which has been the factor behind the positive sentiment. Japan's Nikkei broke through 50K for the first time in a broad rally. Taiex and Kospi also at fresh record highs.Companies mentioned: Plymouth Industrial REIT, Novartis, Avidity Biosciences, SoftBank, Sony, Warner Bros Discovery
Today's guest is Xiong Liu, Director of Data Science and AI at Novartis. Novartis is among the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, pioneering data and advanced analytics in the pursuit of new medicines and patient outcomes. Xiong joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to examine how generative AI and foundation models are transforming R&D, clinical workflows, and research collaboration across the life sciences. The discussion highlights how domain-specific data strategies, improved data quality, and shared benchmarks are accelerating discovery and operationalizing AI for measurable ROI in biopharma. Want to share your AI adoption story with executive peers? Click emerj.com/expert2 for more information and to be a potential future guest on the ‘AI in Business' podcast! If you've enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!
Investing in health and science research isn't just about curing diseases. It has huge impacts across society, from creating jobs to driving economic growth to boosting national competitiveness. Study shows that every $ invested in the life sciences industry generates $3 in GDP globally, whereas every job created in the life sciences industry generates five in the global economy. Life sciences are one of the most powerful engines of prosperity, yet many governments still underestimate their economic return.In this episode of The Ripple Effect: Investing in Life Sciences, host Dan Riskin speaks with Patrick Horber, President of Novartis International, and David Gluckman, Vice Chairman of Investment Banking and Global Head of Healthcare at Lazard. Together, they break down the outsized economic impact of life science innovation, from trillions in US bioscience output to China's meteoric rise as a global R&D hub. The conversation delves into the ways governments can support innovation with not just money, but through policy and regulation; plus, some of the best ways that countries can help the sector secure investment, talent, and long-term growth.This limited series, produced by GZERO's Blue Circle Studios in partnership with Novartis, examines how life science innovation plays a vital role in fulfilling that commitment. Host: Dan RiskinGuests: Patrick Horber, David Gluckman Subscribe to the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.