Friday, July 31, 2015
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
activated Natural Killer (aNK) - A Cellular Immunotherapy Platform by NantKwest
activated Natural Killer (aNK) - A Cellular Immunotherapy Platform by NantKwest
Blockbuster monoclonal antibody therapies such as Herceptin® (trastuzumab) or Rituxan® (Rituximab)[1] specifically target cancer cells, thus avoiding adverse events that are common with chemotherapy. However, much of the cancer cell killing relies upon ADCC (antibody dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity) whereupon effector immune cells attach to antibodies, which are in turn bound to the target cancer cell, thereby facilitating killing of the cancer by the effector cell. NK cells are the key effector cell in the body for ADCC and utilize a specialized receptor (CD16) to bind antibodies.
NantKwest is an innovative clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on harnessing the power of the innate immune system by using the natural killer cell to treat cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory diseases.
NantKwest is uniquely positioned to implement precision cancer medicine, with the potential to change the current paradigm of cancer care. Natural Killer cells are ancient cells in the human body designed to recognize and detect cells under stress or infected. Our "off-the-shelf" activated Natural Killer (NK) platform have the capacity to destroy cancer and virally infected cells from the body. The safety of our NK cells as well as their activity against a broad range of cancers have been tested in multiple phase 1 clinical trials in the United States, Canaa and Europe. In addition to our NK cells capability to be administered in the outpatient setting as an “off-the-shelf” living drug, it serves as a universal cell-based therapy without need for individualized patient matching. Moreover, our NK cell based platform has been bioengineered to incorporate chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and antibody receptors to further optimize targeting and potency in the therapeutic disease.
A Next Generation Immuno Therapy Platform:
A Living Drug - Delivered in a Blood Bag with Multiple Modes of Killing
Overview: The Natural Killer Cell
The immune system is a tapestry of diverse families of immune cells each with its own distinct role in protecting from infections and diseases. Among these immune cells are the natural killer, or NK, cells as the body’s first line of defense. NK cells have the innate ability to rapidly seek and destroy abnormal cells, such as cancer or virally-infected cells, without prior exposure or activation by other support molecules. In contrast to adaptive immune cells such as T cells, NK cells are uniquely powerful in that they are always activated to attack diseased cells, without a delay in killing. Our proprietary activated Natural Killer (aNK) platform is based upon highly potent Natural Killer cells from a unique cell line, harnessing the power of the innate immune system.
Activated Natural Killer "Off-The-Shelf" Cell: The aNK Cell
Our unique NK cell platform has been produced and utilized as a cell-based “off-the-shelf” treatment in phase 1 clinical trials, and has demonstrated tumor killing abilities for cancer. Unlike normal NK cells, our unique NK cells do not express Killer Inhibitory Receptors (KIR), which diseased cells often exploit to evade the killing function of NK cells. We have optimized this unique activated NK, or aNK, cell which lack these inhibitory receptors while retaining the broad array of activating receptors which enable the selective targeting and killing of diseased cells. aNK cells also carry a larger pay load of granzyme and perforin containing granules, thereby enabling them to deliver a far greater payload of lethal enzymes to multiple targets.
Natural Killer (NK) Cell: Mechanism of Action and Innate Killing
We are developing means by which our aNK cells can be grown at commercial scale as on-demand, ‘Living Drug in a Bag’, using our proprietary manufacturing and distribution processes.
Delivering Living Drugs in a Bag
Safety studies of aNK cells in dozens of patients treated in Phase I clinical trials have been conducted in a variety of advanced hematological malignancies and solid tumors. Encouraging evidence of safety, activity and prolonged survival have been demonstrated. Based on these clinical trials, we plan to develop the therapeutic applications of our aNK platform through genetic engineering of our aNK cells designed to leverage the multiple modes of killing available to aNKs, including high affinity antibody targeting, our haNK platform, and tumor antigen targeting, our taNK platform.
Antibody Mediated Cell Killing by high-affinity Natural Killer cells: haNK
Blockbuster monoclonal antibody therapies such as Herceptin® (trastuzumab) or Rituxan® (Rituximab)[1] specifically target cancer cells, thus avoiding adverse events that are common with chemotherapy. However, much of the cancer cell killing relies upon ADCC (antibody dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity) whereupon effector immune cells attach to antibodies, which are in turn bound to the target cancer cell, thereby facilitating killing of the cancer by the effector cell. NK cells are the key effector cell in the body for ADCC and utilize a specialized receptor (CD16) to bind antibodies.
Studies have shown that perhaps only 20% of the human population uniformly expresses the “high-affinity” variant of CD16, which is strongly correlated with more favorable therapeutic outcomes compared to patients with the “low-affinity” CD16. Additionally, many cancer patients have severely weakened immune systems due to chemotherapy, the disease itself or other factors.
We have modified haNK cells to express high-affinity CD16. As such, haNK cells may potentiate the therapeutic efficacy of a broad spectrum of antibodies directed against cancer cells. We are actively advancing haNK with plans to initiate our first clinical trial in 2016.
[1] Herceptin and Rituxan are registered trademarks of Genentech.
Target-Activated Natural Killer Cell: taNK
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technology is among the most novel cancer therapy approaches currently in development. CARs are proteins that allow immune effector cells to target cancer cells displaying specific surface antigens.
taNK (target-activated Natural Killer) is a platform in which our aNK cells are engineered with one or more CARs to target proteins found on cancers and is then integrated with a wide spectrum of CARs. This strategy has multiple advantages over other CAR approaches using patient or donor sourced effector cells such as autologous T-cells, especially in terms of scalability, quality control and consistency.
Our most advanced taNK cell line expresses a CAR for ErbB2 (also known as Her2), a protein commonly found on breast, ovary, gastric, bladder and medulloblastoma (brain) cancers. Other taNK programs are in various stages of development.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Summer Blue Moon - NASA Science
Summer Blue Moon - NASA Science
July 27, 2015: When someone says "Once in a Blue Moon," you know what they mean: Rare, seldom, even absurd.
This year it means "the end of July."
For the second time this month, the Moon is about to become full. There was one full Moon on July 2nd, and now a second is coming on July 31st. According to modern folklore, whenever there are two full Moons in a calendar month, the second one is "blue."
This definition of a Blue Moon is a recent thing.
If you told a person in Shakespeare's day that something happens "once in a Blue Moon" they would attach no astronomical meaning to the statement. Blue moon simply meant rare or absurd, like making a date for "the Twelfth of Never." Since then, however, its meaning has shifted.
The modern definition sprang up in the 1940s. In those days the Maine Farmer's Almanac offered a definition of Blue Moon so convoluted many astronomers struggled to understand it. It involved factors such as ecclesiastical dates of Easter and Lent, tropical years, and the timing of seasons according to the dynamical mean sun. Aiming to explain blue moons to the layman, Sky & Telescope published an article in 1946 entitled "Once in a Blue Moon." The author James Hugh Pruett (1886-1955) cited the 1937 Maine almanac and opined that the "second [full moon] in a month, so I interpret it, is called Blue Moon."
This was not correct, but at least it could be understood. And thus the modern Blue Moon was born.
Most Blue Moons look pale gray and white, just like the Moon you've seen on any other night. Squeezing a second full Moon into a calendar month doesn't change its color.
Nevertheless, on rare occasions the Moon can turn blue.
A truly-blue Moon usually requires a volcanic eruption. Back in 1883, for example, people saw blue moons almost every night after the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploded with the force of a 100-megaton nuclear bomb. Plumes of ash rose to the very top of Earth's atmosphere, and the Moon … it turned blue!
Krakatoa's ash was the reason. Some of the plumes were filled with particles 1 micron wide, about the same as the wavelength of red light. Particles of this special size strongly scatter red light, while allowing blue light to pass through. Krakatoa’s clouds thus acted like a blue filter.
People also saw blue-colored Moons in 1983 after the eruption of the El Chichon volcano in Mexico. And there are reports of blue Moons caused by Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
Forest fires can do the same trick. A famous example is the giant muskeg fire of Sept. 1953 in Alberta, Canada. Clouds of smoke containing micron-sized oil droplets produced lavender suns and blue Moons all the way from North America to England. At this time of year, summer wildfires often produce smoke with an abundance of micron-sized particles–just the right size to turn the Moon truly blue.
On the other hand, maybe it will turn red. Often, when the Moon is hanging low, it looks red for the same reason that sunsets are red. The atmosphere is full of aerosols much smaller than the ones injected by volcanoes. These aerosols scatter blue light, while leaving the red behind.
For this reason, red Blue Moons are far more common than blue Blue Moons.
Sounds absurd? Yes, but that's what a Blue Moon is all about. Step outside at sunset on July 31st, look east, and see what color presents itself.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Barchart.com's Chart of the Day - Skyworks Solutions for Jul 2, 2015
The Chart of the Day belongs to Skyworks Solutions (SWKS). I found the semiconductor stock by using Barchart to sort the S&P 500 Large Cap Index stocks for the stocks with the highest Weighted Alpha, then used the Flipchart feature to review the charts,
Skyworks Solutions, Inc. is the industry's leading wireless semiconductor company focused on radio frequency (RF) and complete semiconductor system solutions for mobile communications applications.
The status of Barchart's Opinion trading systems are listed below. Please note that the Barchart Opinion indicators are updated live during the session every 10 minutes and can therefore change during the day as the market fluctuates. The indicator numbers shown below therefore may not match what you see live on the Barchart.com web site when you read this report
Barchart technical indicators:
- 8% Barchart technical buy signals
- Trend Spotter hold signal
- Below its 20 day moving average but above its 50 and 100 DMA
- 64 new highs and up 119.03% in the last year
- Relative Strength Index 47.03%
- Barchart computes a technical support level at 101.01
- Recently traded at 104.57 with a 50 day moving average of 102.72
Fundamental facotrs:
- Market Cap $19.93 billion
- P/E 26.90
- Dividend yield .50%
- Revenue expected to grow 41.20% this year and another 12.80% next year
- Earnings estimated to increase 58.00% this year, an additional 15.80% next year and continue to compound at an annual rate of 21.28% for the next 5 years
- Wall Street analysts issued 6 strong by, 12 buy and 4 hold recommendations on the stock
The 20-100 Day MACD Oscillator has been a reliable technical trading strategy for this stock.
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