It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, September 10, 2022
Study examines the impact of fake online reviews on sales
New research exposes the pervasive practice of fake online product reviews
INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES
Key Takeaways:
There’s a large online marketplace for the selling and buying of fake online reviews.
Fake online reviews do contribute to better ratings and sales for product sellers.
Most major brands do not engage in the practice of buying fake reviews.
Online marketplaces work to regulate online fake reviews, but there is lag time in enforcement.
BALTIMORE, MD, September 9, 2022 – Can you really trust that online product review before you make a purchase decision? New research has found that the practice of faking online product reviews may be more pervasive than you think.
According to researchers, a wide array of product marketers actually purchases fake online reviews through an online marketplace found through social media. As a result, marketers receive many reviews and high-average ratings on e-commerce sites that include Amazon, Walmart and Wayfair, among others.
The study, published in the current issue of the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, “The Market for Fake Reviews,” is authored by Sherry He and Brett Hollenbeck of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Davide Proserpio of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (USC).
“We set out to study the economics and rating manipulation and their effect on seller outcomes, consumer welfare and platform value,” says He. “Despite the fact that the practice of buying online reviews is illegal, we were able to document the existence of large and active online markets for fake reviews.”
Here’s how it works: Sellers post in private online groups to promote their products. They then pay customers to purchase certain products and leave positive reviews. These social media groups exist for a number of online retailers.
“For our research, we decided to focus on Amazon because it is the largest and most developed market,” says Hollenbeck. “We collected data from this market by sending research assistants into these social media groups to document which product marketers were buying fake reviews and when. We then tracked these products’ outcomes on Amazon.com. This included reviews, ratings, prices and sales rank.”
The researchers found that the buying of fake reviews is associated with a significant but short-term increase in average rating and the total number of reviews. They found that there is a certain rating manipulation that also has a causal effect on sales. They also found that after firms stopped buying fake reviews, their products’ average ratings fell and the share of one-star reviews tended to increase. This, they concluded, indicates that rating manipulation mostly centers on low-quality products.
To conduct their research, the study authors built a sample of approximately 1,500 products that were observed soliciting fake reviews over a nine-month period. The researchers found that the types of products involved represented many categories. They then tracked the outcomes of these products before and after the buying of fake reviews, and were able to document how the platform, in this case Amazon, regulates fake reviews.
“For the products in our research observed buying fake reviews, roughly half of their reviews were eventually deleted, but the deletions occurred with an average lag of over 100 days, allowing sellers to benefit from the short-term boost in ratings, reviews and sales,” says Proserpio. “Almost none of the sellers purchasing fake reviews were well-known brands. This is consistent with other research that has shown online reviews are more effective and more critical to smaller, lesser-known brands.”
Marketing Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly marketing journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of the interface between consumers and firms. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. More information is available atwww.informs.org or@informs.
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New study on financial management in higher ed shows that budgeting flexibility is the key to security
The decades-long decline in U.S. college enrollment experienced its largest two-year decrease in more than 50 years this spring. Universities increasingly face stiffer competition with less money from state budgets, which does not bode well for their financial security. A new study from the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ) finds that the universities thriving in this environment are doing more with less simply by adopting more flexible budgeting. The problem is, many universities face internal and external pressures that inhibit financial flexibility.
“Universities that reallocate resources more regularly are more likely to run larger budget surpluses,” says Sohvi Heaton, a visiting assistant professor at Santa Clara University. “However, this is far more likely to be true at universities where external governance arrangements allow greater executive discretion.”
Heaton teamed with David Teece, a noted economist and professor at UC Berkley, and Eugene Agronin, a data scientist and economist, to study more than two decades of longitudinal data on the financial performance of U.S. public universities. The study digs into the concept of dynamic capabilities and uses ‘deviation of expense ratio’ (DER), or the change in expense ratio across all budget segments from one year to the next, to measure how easily universities can reallocate funds. They compare DER to the university’s annual surpluses or deficits to determine its effect on financial performance.
“In absolute terms over the period we studied, a typical annual change in DER could have added $10.02 million to the average university's income,” says Agronin. “The effect is not insignificant given that a public university typically spends about $5 million for scholarships.”
The authors then segmented universities into low, medium, or high, levels of regulation based on their state governing board structures, finding 239, 328, and 1,136 respectively. Using a complicated linear regression model of university financial performance in light of DER and governance — while controlling for variables like funding structure, endowments, and university size —they found that low governance more than doubles resource allocation flexibility’s affect, while high governance weakens it.
“In many of these cases, a budget deficit would become a surplus if a university increased DER by just one standard deviation,” says Teece. “In that context, governance arrangements that are too prescriptive have a large effect on financial performance of universities by making it difficult to allow necessary financial flexibility and associated resource reallocations.”
Multiple corporate studies have established that resources allocation flexibility can improve performance under good leadership, but this study is the first to apply those dynamics to higher education. Academic budgets often sublimate financial performance and market considerations to internal politics—or external politics if subject to heavy government oversight. The authors warn that their results clearly indicate a change to the traditional university budget model is necessary to survive in the current higher education climate.
“A university must be able to not only conduct research and teaching, but also learn how to manage itself well,” says Heaton. “In the age of international competition for resources and talent, ‘organized anarchies’ are no longer an acceptable model for college and university management.”
The Strategic Management Journal (SMJ), founded in 1980, is the world’s leading mass impact journal for research in strategic management. The SMJ seeks to publish papers that ask and help to answer important and interesting questions in strategic management, develop and/or test theory, replicate prior studies, explore interesting phenomena, review and synthesize existing research, and evaluate the many methodologies used in the strategic management field.
SMJ is published by the Strategic Management Society (SMS), an association comprised of 3,000 academics, business practitioners, and consultants from 80 countries that focuses on the development and dissemination of insights on the strategic management process, as well as on fostering contacts and interchanges around the world. To find out more about SMS’s scientific and educational programs in strategic management, please visit www.strategicmanagement.net.
Particles linked to climate change also promote cancerous changes in airway cells
Cells with EGFR and KRAS gene mutations can turn cancerous when exposed to air pollutants
Late-breaking data pave way to new approaches to lung cancer prevention and treatment
Paris, France, 10 September 2022 - A new mechanism has been identified through which very small pollutant particles in the air may trigger lung cancer in people who have never smoked, paving the way to new prevention approaches and development of therapies, according to late-breaking data [to be] reported at the ESMO Congress 2022 by scientists of the Francis Crick Institute and University College London, funded by Cancer Research UK (1). The particles, which are typically found in vehicle exhaust and smoke from fossil fuels, are associated with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) risk, accounting for over 250,000 lung cancer deaths globally per year (2,3).
“The same particles in the air that derive from the combustion of fossil fuels, exacerbating climate change, are directly impacting human health via an important and previously overlooked cancer-causing mechanism in lung cells. The risk of lung cancer from air pollution is lower than from smoking, but we have no control over what we all breathe. Globally, more people are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution than to toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, and these new data link the importance of addressing climate health to improving human health,” said Charles Swanton, the Francis Crick Institute and Cancer Research UK Chief Clinician, London, UK, who will present the research results at the ESMO 2022 Presidential Symposium on Saturday, 10 September.
The new findings are based on human and laboratory research on mutations in a gene called EGFR which are seen in about half of people with lung cancer who have never smoked. In a study of nearly half a million people living in England, South Korea and Taiwan, exposure to increasing concentrations of airborne particulate matter (PM) 2.5 micrometres (μm) in diameter was linked to increased risk of NSCLC with EGFR mutations.
In the laboratory studies, the Francis Crick Institute scientists showed that the same pollutant particles (PM2.5) promoted rapid changes in airway cells which had mutations in EGFR and in another gene linked to lung cancer called KRAS, driving them towards a cancer stem cell like state. They also found that air pollution drives the influx of macrophages which release the inflammatory mediator, interleukin-1β, driving the expansion of cells with the EGFR mutations in response to exposure to PM2.5, and that blockade of interleukin-1β inhibited lung cancer initiation. These findings were consistent with data from a previous large clinical trial showing a dose dependent reduction in lung cancer incidence when people were treated with the anti-IL1β antibody, canakinumab (4).
In a final series of experiments, the Francis Crick team used state-of-the-art, ultradeep mutational profiling of small samples of normal lung tissue and found EGFR and KRAS driver mutations in 18% and 33% of normal lung samples, respectively.
“We found that driver mutations in EGFR and KRAS genes, commonly found in lung cancers, are actually present in normal lung tissue and are a likely consequence of ageing. In our research, these mutations alone only weakly potentiated cancer in laboratory models. However, when lung cells with these mutations were exposed to air pollutants, we saw more cancers and these occurred more quickly than when lung cells with these mutations were not exposed to pollutants, suggesting that air pollution promotes the initiation of lung cancer in cells harbouring driver gene mutations. The next step is to discover why some lung cells with mutations become cancerous when exposed to pollutants while others don’t,” said Swanton.
Commenting on the results, Tony Mok, Chinese University of Hong Kong, not involved in the study, said: “This research is intriguing and exciting as it means that we can ask whether, in the future, it will be possible to use lung scans to look for pre-cancerous lesions in the lungs and try to reverse them with medicines such as interleukin-1β inhibitors. We don’t yet know whether it will be possible to use highly sensitive EGFR profiling on blood or other samples to find non-smokers who are predisposed to lung cancer and may benefit from lung scanning, so discussions are still very speculative.”
Like Swanton, he stresses the importance of reducing air pollution to lower the risk of lung diseases, including cancer. “We have known about the link between pollution and lung cancer for a long time, and we now have a possible explanation for it. As consumption of fossil fuels goes hand in hand with pollution and carbon emissions, we have a strong mandate for tackling these issues – for both environmental and health reasons,” Mok concluded.
-END-
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Notes to Editors Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO Congress 2022 Official Congress Hashtag: #ESMO22
Disclaimer This press release contains information provided by the author of the highlighted abstract and reflects the content of this abstract. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.
References
1 LBA1 ‘Mechanism of action and an actionable inflammatory axis for air pollution induced non-small cell lung cancer in never smokers’ will be presented by Charles Swanton during Presidential Symposium 1 on Saturday, 10 September, 16:30 to 18:00 CEST in Paris Auditorium. Annals of Oncology, Volume 33 Supplement 7, September 2022
2 Liu X, Mubarik S, Wang S. Lung Cancer Death Attributable to Long-Term Ambient Particulate Matter (PM2.5) Exposure in East Asian Countries During 1990–2019. Frontiers in Medicine 2021 Oct 15;8:742076
3 Turner MC, Andersen ZJ, Baccarelli A et al. Outdoor Air Pollution and Cancer: An Overview of the Current Evidence and Public Health Recommendations. CA: Cancer J Clin 2020; 70: 460-479
4 Ridker PM, MacFadyen JG, Thuren T et al. Effect of interleukin-1β inhibition with canakinumab on incident lung cancer in patients with atherosclerosis: exploratory results from a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Lancet 2017 Oct 21; 390 (10105): 1833-1842
ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 25,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 160 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. Drawing on more than 45 years of experience, ESMO serves its members and the oncology community by providing networking and professional growth opportunities: oncologists can engage in projects, committees and working groups aiming to promote science and foster improvements in the oncology practice. With training, resources and tools, oncologists are enabled to stay up to date with the latest scientific advances and continue to deliver the best possible care to cancer patients. By representing and advocating for the oncology community at the highest political levels, ESMO ensures that the needs of both patients and doctors are properly taken care of. Driven by a shared determination to secure the best possible outcomes for patients, ESMO is committed to standing by those who care about cancer through addressing the diverse needs of #ONEoncologycommunity, offering #educationforLIFE, and advocating for #accessiblecancerCARE. www.esmo.org
The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute dedicated to understanding the fundamental biology underlying health and disease. Its work is helping to understand why disease develops and to translate discoveries into new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, infections, and neurodegenerative diseases. An independent organisation, its founding partners are the Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, UCL (University College London), Imperial College London and King’s College London. The Crick was formed in 2015, and in 2016 it moved into a brand new state-of-the-art building in central London which brings together 1500 scientists and support staff working collaboratively across disciplines, making it the biggest biomedical research facility under a single roof in Europe. www.crick.ac.uk
Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research, influence and information. Cancer Research UK’s pioneering work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer has helped save millions of lives. Cancer Research UK has been at the heart of the progress that has already seen survival in the UK double in the last 40 years. Today, 2 in 4 people survive their cancer for at least 10 years. Cancer Research UK wants to accelerate progress and see 3 in 4 people surviving their cancer by 2034. Cancer Research UK supports research into the prevention and treatment of cancer through the work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses. Together with its partners and supporters, Cancer Research UK is working towards a world where people can live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer. www.cancerresearchuk.org or +44(0) 300 123 1022
LBA1 - Mechanism of action and an actionable inflammatory axis for air pollution induced non-small cell lung cancer: towards molecular cancer prevention
C. Swanton1, W. Hill2, E. Lim3, C. Lee4, C.E. Weeden5, M. Augustine6, K. Chen7, F.-C. Kuan8, F. Marongiu9, F. Rodrigues10, H. Cha11, T. Jacks12, M. Luchtenborg13, I. Malanchi14, J. Downward15, C. Carlsten16, A. Hackshaw17, K.R. Litchfield18, J. DeGregori19, M. Jamal-Hanjani20
1Translational Cancer Therapeutics Department, Francis Crick Institute, London/United Kingdom, 2Cancer Evolution And Genome Instability Laboratory, Francis Crick Institute, London/United Kingdom, 3Cancer Evolution And Genome Instability Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London/United Kingdom, 4Cegi, Francis Crick Institute, London/United Kingdom, 51 Midland Rd, The Francis Crick Institute, London/United Kingdom, 6Tumour Immunogenomics And Immunosurveillance, UCL - University College London, London/United Kingdom, 7Thoracic Surgery, Peking University People’s Hospital, Beijing/China, 8Hematology Oncology, Chang Gung Medical Foundation - Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Puzi City/Taiwan, 9Department Of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics, UCHealth Cancer Care - Anschutz Medical Campus - University of Colorado Cancer Center, Aurora/United States of America, 10Tumour-host Interaction Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London/United Kingdom, 11Division Of Hematology-oncology, Samsung Medical Center (SMC) - Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul/Korea, Republic of, 12The Jacks Lab, Koch Institute For Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, Cambridge/United States of America, 13National Cancer Registration And Analysis Service, Public Health England, London/United Kingdom, 14Tumour Host Interaction Lab, Francis Crick Institute, London/United Kingdom, 15Oncogene Biology Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London/United Kingdom, 16Centre For Lung Health, UBC - The University of British Columbia, Vancouver/Canada, 17Clinical Trials, Cancer Research UK & University College London Cancer Trials Centre, London/United Kingdom, 18Tumour Immunogenomics And Immunosurveillance, UCL Cancer Institute - UCL - London's Global University, London/United Kingdom, 19Biochemistry And Molecular Genetics, UCHealth Cancer Care - Anschutz Medical Campus - University of Colorado Cancer Center, Aurora/United States of America, 20Medical Oncology Dept., UCL Cancer Institute - Paul O'Gorman Building, London/United Kingdom
Background: A mechanistic basis for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) initiation in never smokers, a disease with a high frequency of EGFR mutations (EGFRm), is unknown. The air pollutant, particulate matter (PM), is known to be associated with the risk of NSCLC, however a direct cause and mechanism remain elusive.
Methods: We analysed 463,679 individuals to address the associations of increasing 2.5um PM (PM2.5) concentrations with cancer risk. We performed ultra-deep profiling of 247 normal lung tissue samples, analysed normal lung tissue from humans and mice following exposures to PM, and investigated the consequences of PM on tumour promotion in mouse lung cancer models.
Results: Increasing PM2.5 levels were associated with increased risk of EGFRm NSCLC in England, S.Korea and Taiwan and with increased risk of mesothelioma (HR=1.19), lung (HR=1.16), anal (HR=1.23), small intestine (HR=1.30), GBM (HR=1.19), lip, oral cavity and pharynx (HR: 1.15) and laryngeal carcinomas (HR=1.26) in UK Biobank; HR for each 1ug/m3 PM2.5 increment. 18-33% of normal lung tissue samples harbour driver mutations in EGFR and KRAS in the absence of malignancy. PM promotes a macrophage response and a progenitor-like state in lung epithelium harbouring mutant EGFR. Consistent with PM promoting NSCLC in at-risk epithelium harbouring driver mutations, PM increased tumour burden in three EGFR or KRAS driven lung cancer models in a dose-dependent manner. Finally, we uncover an actionable inflammatory axis driven by IL1B in response to PM, with anti-IL1B therapy preventing PM-induced mouse tumour formation, consistent with reductions in human lung cancer incidence with anti-IL1B therapy.
Conclusions: These results shed light on the aetiology of EGFRm lung cancer, particularly in never-smokers, and suggest that oncogenic mutations may be necessary but insufficient for tumour formation. These data reveal a mechanistic basis for PM driven lung cancer in the absence of classical carcinogen-driven mutagenesis, reminiscent of models of tumour initiation and promotion proposed 70 years ago, providing evidence to limit air pollution and opportunities for molecular targeted cancer prevention.
Clinical trial identification: TRAcking Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Evolution Through Therapy (Rx) (TRACERx) (NCT01888601) The PEACE (Posthumous Evaluation of Advanced Cancer Environment) Study (PEACE) (NCT03004755) Biomarkers and Dysplastic Respiratory Epithelium (NCT00900419)
Legal entity responsible for the study: Francis Crick Institute and UCL Hospitals NHS Trust
Funding: Foundation or academic group WITHOUT funding from a pharma, biotech, or other commercial company - This work has been supported by the Mark Foundation ASPIRE I Award (Grant 21-029-ASP), Lung Cancer Research Foundation Grant on Disparities in Lung Cancer, Advanced Grant (PROTEUS, Grant Agreement no. 835297), CRUK EDD (EDDPMA-Nov21100034), and Rosetrees Out-of-round Award (OoR2020100009). E.L.L. receives funding from NovoNordisk Foundation (ID 16584), The Mark Foundation (Grant 21-029-ASP) and has been supported by Rosetrees. W.H is funded by an ERC Advanced Grant (PROTEUS, Grant Agreement no. 835297), CRUK EDD (EDDPMA-Nov21100034), The Mark Foundation (Grant 21-029-ASP) and has been supported by Rosetrees. K.C. is supported by Research Unit of Intelligence Diagnosis and Treatment in Early Non-small Cell Lung Cancer, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (2021RU002), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.82072566) and Peking University People's Hospital Research and Development Funds (RS2019-01). T.K. receives grant support from JSPS Overseas Research Fellowships Program (202060447). S.H.L is supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2020R1A2C3006535), the National Cancer Center Grant (NCC1911269-3), and a grant of the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (grant number : HR20C0025). N.M. is a Sir Henry Dale Fellow, jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society (Grant Number 211179/Z/18/Z) and also receives funding from Cancer Research UK, Rosetrees and the NIHR BRC at University College London Hospitals and the CRUK University College London Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre. J.D., M.G., Y.E.M. D.T.M. and R.L.K receive funding from American Association for Cancer Research/Johnson&Johnson (18-90-52-DEGR), and J.D. is supported by the Courtenay C. and Lucy Patten Davis Endowed Chair in Lung Cancer Research. M.G., Y.E.M. D.T.M. and R.L.K. were supported by National Cancer Institute (NCI) RO1 CA219893. E.J.E. was supported by NCI Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award T32-CA190216. The work at the University of Colorado was also supported by NCI Cancer Center Support Grant P30CA046934. M.J.-H. has received funding from Cancer Research UK, National Institute for Health Research, Rosetrees Trust, UKI NETs and NIHR University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre. C.S. is Royal Society Napier Research Professor. He is supported by the Francis Crick Institute, which receives its core funding from Cancer Research UK (FC001169), the UK Medical Research Council (FC001169), and the Wellcome Trust (FC001169). C.S. is funded by Cancer Research UK (TRACERx, PEACE and CRUK Cancer Immunotherapy Catalyst Network), Cancer Research UK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence, the Rosetrees Trust, Butterfield and Stoneygate Trusts, NovoNordisk Foundation (ID16584), Royal Society Research Professorships Enhancement Award (RP/EA/180007), the NIHR BRC at University College London Hospitals, the CRUK-UCL Centre, Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF). This research is supported by a Stand Up To Cancer-LUNGevity-American Lung Association Lung Cancer Interception Dream Team Translational Research Grant (SU2C-AACR-DT23-17). Stand Up To Cancer is a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation. Research grants are administered by the American Association for Cancer Research, the Scientific Partner of SU2C. C.S. also receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) Consolidator Grant (FP7-THESEUS-617844), European Commission ITN (FP7-PloidyNet 607722), an ERC Advanced Grant (PROTEUS) from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (835297) and Chromavision from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (665233). This work was supported by the Francis Crick Institute, which receives its core funding from Cancer Research UK (grant no. FC001112), the UK Medical Research Council (grant no. FC001112), and the Wellcome Trust (grant no. FC001112) and the European Research Council (grant no. ERC CoG-H2020-725492).
Disclosure:C. Swanton: Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker, Activity took place in 2016.: Pfizer; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker, October 26th 2020: Novartis; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker: Roche/Ventana; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker: BMS; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker, Activity took place in 2016.: Celgene; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker: AstraZeneca; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker: MSD; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker: Illumina; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board, AdBoard - November 12th, 2020: Amgen; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board: Genentech; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board: Sarah Canon Research Institute; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board, Joined October 2020. Also have stock options: Bicycle Therapeutics; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board: Medicxi; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker: GlaxoSmithKline; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board, Member of the Science Management Committee. Also have stock options: GRAIL; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, Consultancy agreement: Roche Innovation Centre Shanghai; Financial Interests, Personal, Full or part-time Employment, Chief Clinician since October 2017: Cancer Research UK; Financial Interests, Personal, Ownership Interest, Co-Founder of Achilles Therapeutics. Also, have stock options in this company.: Achilles Therapeutics; Financial Interests, Personal, Stocks/Shares, Stocks owned until June 2021: GRAIL; Financial Interests, Personal, Stocks/Shares, Stocks owned until June 2021: Apogen Biotechnologies; Financial Interests, Personal, Stocks/Shares: Epic Biosciences; Financial Interests, Personal, Stocks/Shares: Bicycle Therapeutics; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant, Funded RUBICON grant - October 2018 - April 2021.: Bristol Myers Squibb; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant, Collaboration in minimal residual disease sequencing technologies.: Archer Dx Inc; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant: Pfizer; Financial Interests, Institutional, Invited Speaker, Chief Investigator for the MeRmaiD1 clinical trial and chair of the steering committee.: AstraZeneca; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant: Ono Pharmaceutical; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant: Boehringer Ingelheim; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant, Research Grants from 2015-2019.: Roche-Ventana; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, Co-chief investigator: NHS-Galleri Clinical Trial; Non-Financial Interests, , Principal Investigator, Chief Investigator for MeRmaiD1 clinical trial: AstraZeneca; Non-Financial Interests, , Invited Speaker, From 2019: AACR; Non-Financial Interests, , Other, Board of Directors: AACR; Non-Financial Interests, , Advisory Role, EACR Advisory Council member: EACR. T. Jacks: Financial Interests, Personal, Member of the Board of Directors: Amgen; Financial Interests, Personal, Member of the Board of Directors: Thermo Fisher Scientific; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board, co-Founder: Dragonfly Therapeutics; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, co-Founder: T2 Biosystems; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board: SQZ Biotech; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board: Skyhawk Therapeutics; Financial Interests, Personal, Leadership Role: Break Through Cancer; Financial Interests, Institutional, Funding: Johnson & Johnson. J. Downward: Financial Interests, Personal, Other, consultant: AstraZeneca; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, consultant: Bayer; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, consultant: Jubilant; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, consultant: Theras; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, consultant: Vividion; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, consultant: Novartis; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant: BMS; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant: Revolution Medicines; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant: Boehringer Ingelheim. K.R. Litchfield: Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker: Roche Tissue Diagnostics; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, Consulting work: Monopteros Therapeutics; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant: Ono/LifeArc; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant, Research funding: Genesis Therapeutics; Non-Financial Interests, Institutional, Proprietary Information, Collaboration on data analysis: Bms. M. Jamal-Hanjani: Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker, Invited speaker honorarium: Oslo Cancer Cluster; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker, Invited speaker honorarium: Astex Pharmaceutical; Non-Financial Interests, , Advisory Role, Scientific Advisory Board and Steering Committee member: Achilles Therapeutics; Other, , Other, I am named as co-inventor on patent PCT/US2017/028013 relating to methods for lung cancer detection.: Patent. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
Late-breaking results presented at the ESMO Congress 2022 elucidate the link between air pollution and lung cancer
ESMO partners with EONS to launch the Cancer Prevention across Europe (PrEvCan) campaign
Study confirms accuracy of multi-cancer early detection blood testing, paving the way for a new era in cancer screening
Paris, France, 9 September 2022 – Sustainability will be at the heart of many discussions at the ESMO Congress 2022, as illustrated by the new results and initiatives spanning cancer prevention, early detection and treatment that were announced today during the opening press conference to the annual meeting of the international oncology community taking place 9-13 September in Paris, France.
“By definition, sustainability is about being able to maintain important, high-quality processes over time. In oncology, seeing the rise in cancer cases, we need to ask ourselves how we can make sure the essential process of caring for patients can be maintained,” said ESMO President Prof. Solange Peters. “Sustainability encompasses the notion of avoiding degradation, meaning that we also have to look at maintaining the quality – which, in cancer, includes the availability of and access to anticancer drugs. It also includes quality of life, which is still dependent on the environment, and as ESMO we need to start looking at the environmental sustainability of everything we do.”
Underscoring the multifaceted nature of sustainability as a societal goal, late-breaking results to be presented at the ESMO Congress 2022 offer a deeper understanding of the long-established link between air pollution and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) arising in people who have never smoked, and make clear the link between climate change and human health. “Pollution has a known association with lung cancer, but we didn’t know if and how it directly causes the disease,” said study author and ESMO 2022 Scientific Co-Chair Prof. Charles Swanton, the Francis Crick Institute and Cancer Research UK Chief Clinician, London, UK, explaining the background to this work. (1)
The research, based on human and laboratory studies, showed for a population of nearly half a million people living in England, South Korea and Taiwan that exposure to increasing concentrations of airborne particulate matter (PM) 2.5 micrometres (μm) in diameter was linked to increased risk of NSCLC with mutations in the EGFR gene, which are known to be present in about half of people with lung cancer who have never smoked. In laboratory mouse models, the same pollutant particles (PM2.5) were seen to directly cause lung cancer by acting through lung tissue inflammation, driving the release of a molecule known as interleukin-1β that causes epithelial cells to transdifferentiate into cancer stem-like cells. In the presence of mutations in EGFR and in another gene linked to lung cancer called KRAS, these cells can then bloom into a tumour.
“These mutations can be found in over half of normal lung tissue biopsies and are a natural process of ageing. They are necessary, but not sufficient to drive cancer: it is in combination with pollution that the cancer stem cells can expand and initiate a tumour. This begins to explain how environmental carcinogens that don’t induce DNA mutations can drive cancer,” said Swanton, deriving from this discovery a public health mandate to lower the levels of these pollutants, which are produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. “We have to achieve a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and by doing so we will naturally reduce levels of PM2.5. We can all play a part here: we need to cycle more, walk more. It’s worth bearing in mind that PM2.5 cause 8 million deaths a year, not just due to cancer but also to other diseases like cardiovascular disease, strokes, dementia – that is more than the deaths caused by tobacco globally.”
In light of the fact that his research confirmed the blockade of interleukin-1β could inhibit lung cancer initiation by blocking the pollution-induced transformation of airway cells into cancer stem cells, Swanton also suggested that targeting interleukin-1β should be further explored in the future as a potential new approach to cancer prevention.
The findings come in a context where the global incidence of respiratory cancers is on the rise, with annual new cases expected to jump by about 70% over the next two decades. In Europe alone, similar trends observed for other malignancies could result in an increase in overall cancer mortality, from 2 million annual deaths in 2020, to as many as 3 million by 2040. (2) As up to half of all cancers are thought to be preventable, prevention is considered by the World Health Organisation to be the most cost-effective, and thus the most sustainable, long-term strategy for cancer control.
“The ESMO Vision 2025, made very clear that if we want to succeed in tackling cancer, we need to develop a clear plan for primary and secondary prevention, continue to offer the optimal care for cancers that cannot be prevented and adequately support cancer survivorship. Focusing on only one of these areas and neglecting the others would lead to failure,” said ESMO Director of Public Policy Dr. Rosa Giuliani.
In line with the Society’s commitment to promoting research-based cancer prevention, the ESMO representatives joined European Oncology Nursing Society (EONS) Executive Board member Dr. Lena Sharp, Regional Cancer Centre, Stockholm, Sweden, in announcing the launch today of the Cancer Prevention across Europe Campaign (PrEvCan).
Led by EONS with ESMO as key partner alongside other international organisations, the campaign will over a one-year period dedicate each month to promoting and explaining the scientific evidence for each one of the 12 recommendations of the European Code Against Cancer (ECAC) to prevent the disease, starting in October with smoking as one of the most important cancer risk factors.
“What is new here is that it is the cancer care workforce leading the way,” said Sharp, the PrEvCan project leader. “We are the ones who meet patients and their families, so we could intervene on a daily basis supporting and advising people to adopt healthier lifestyles to reduce the risk of new cancers but also to reduce negative effects on the current disease.”
The campaign will target the general public, including the most vulnerable groups who can be difficult to reach with health promotion and lifestyle advice, but equally healthcare professionals, who according to Sharp can also take a more prominent role in supporting vaccination and screening programmes.
The ESMO President added: “We thought for a while that prevention should be in the hands of family doctors, but then we started to learn that preventing the disease must be at least partly in the hands of the specialists of a specific disease, in order to convince people about its importance. Particularly after COVID, a certain degree of suspicion can happen in medicine. You need to make sure that everything you propose has a basis – and one of these bases for cancer prevention is the burden of cancer, what it represents not only in terms of lost years of life but also in terms of the sustainability of our societies and healthcare systems.” Peters further highlighted that oncologists should view prevention as an integral part of oncology care, also because the science of prevention still requires more data.
For cancers that are not currently avoidable, screening and early detection has the potential to both maximise individuals’ chances of survival, and alleviate the burden on health systems by reducing the proportion of patients with advanced disease who require costly, chronic therapies and care.
A study to be presented at this year’s Congress could lead to a major paradigm shift in this field, having confirmed the feasibility of multi-cancer early detection (MCED) blood testing as a method of screening for up to 50 different cancer types simultaneously. (3)
“This is one of the very first studies where the detection of cancer DNA in the blood has allowed us to detect cancer at an early stage,” said ESMO 2022 Scientific Co-Chair Prof. Fabrice André, Institute Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France. “If this test works, in the future, it will be good news for patients, but most cancer centres are not equipped to scale up surgeries for hundreds more patients with, say, early-stage pancreatic cancer. With this landmark study comes a need for a wake-up call for hospitals to see what will happen in 10 years and start now to train fellows and change their infrastructures accordingly.”
Highlighting the time and patience required to turn promising research results into meaningful innovation for patients, Swanton observed: “ESMO 2022 is a celebration of the collaboration between basic scientists and healthcare professionals to advance care for our patients. Some of the breakthroughs that will be discussed over the next four days have come from biological studies of worms, yeast, bacteria and plants – but they took 30 or 40 years of painstaking science from the bench to the bedside. We need our funders to recognise that and to sustain investment in discovery research to generate the medicines of the future.”
Among other highly anticipated results to be presented at the ESMO Congress 2022 , André drew attention to several examples of novel approaches which could soon become a reality in the clinic: from the phase III trial of gamma secretase inhibitor (GSI) nirogacestat, a first-in-class drug targeting a new molecular alteration in a rare category of cancers known as desmoid tumours, through a landmark trial of cell therapy using tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) to improve the outcomes of patients with advanced melanoma, all the way to several late-phase trials of immunotherapy, including for non-small cell lunger cancer patients not eligible to standard platinum chemotherapy. André welcomed the presence of studies for underrepresented patient populations in the Congress’s scientific programme, concluding: “We cannot exclude patients from clinical trials.”
In closing, ESMO 2022 Press Officer Dr. Antonio Passaro called for a wide and wise dissemination of the data to be presented: “We have here a community of about 25,000 people, with more than 1,900 abstracts and 76 LBAs that will be presented in the coming days. We need to pass these messages to all of our colleagues and the public in order to dramatically improve the future of our patients, which risks being worse than it is today considering current cancer incidence trends.”
-END-
Notes to Editors
Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO Congress 2022
3 Abstract 903O ‘A prospective study of a multi-cancer early detection blood test’ will be presented by Deb Schrag during the proffered paper
session “Basic science and translational research” on Sunday, 11 September, 16:30 to 18:00 CEST in Orléans Auditorium. Annals of Oncology,
Volume 33 Supplement 7, September 2022
4 The ESMO ANMS 2.0 survey about access to cancer medicines will be discussed during the educational session “The Universal Health Coverage (UHC) dilemma: Can we afford to pay for what we want?” on Saturday, 10 September, 8:30 to 10:00 CEST in Marseille Auditorium.
ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 25,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 160 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. Driven by a shared determination to secure the best possible outcomes for patients, ESMO is committed to standing by those who care about cancer through addressing the diverse needs of #ONEoncologycommunity, offering #educationforLIFE, and advocating for #accessiblecancerCARE. www.esmo.org
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Mississippi wasted welfare funds on Brett Favre speeches he never made
Bob Brigham September 01, 2022 Brett Favre / Shutterstock.
With schools closed in Jackson and water out at the Mississippi state Capitol, the state is struggling through a different scandal about broken government services.
"Brett Favre earned nearly $140 million as a star NFL quarterback over two decades and millions more in product endorsements," NBC News reported. "But that didn’t stop the state of Mississippi from paying Favre $1.1 million in 2017 and 2018 to make motivational speeches — out of federal welfare funds intended for needy families. The Mississippi state auditor said Favre never gave the speeches and demanded the money back, with interest."
"Favre has repaid the fees, although not the $228,000 in interest the auditor also demanded," NBC News reported. "But the revelation by the auditor that $70 million in TANF welfare funds was doled out to a multimillionaire athlete, a professional wrestler, a horse farm and a volleyball complex are at the heart of a scandal that has rocked the nation’s poorest state, sparking parallel state and federal criminal investigations that have led to charges and guilty pleas involving some of the key players."
Favre's lawyer, Bud Holmes, revealed the former NFL quarterback had been interviewed by the FBI.
"The speeches aren’t the only welfare grants tied to Favre. Text messages obtained by the website Mississippi Today and authenticated by [Brad] Pigott show that Favre sought a $3.2 million grant to a drug company in which he was a shareholder and a $5 million award that built a volleyball arena at the University of Southern Mississippi, where his daughter played the sport and where he played football," NBC News reported.
President Joe Biden Thursday night delivered a 23-minute primetime address urging Americans to choose democracy over fascism, while calling out, by name, Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans
Historians, political scientists, and journalism and extremism experts are praising the President for standing up for American values in the face of rising far-right threats of political violence. President Biden in very clear terms warned Americans they must "defend" and "protect" democracy against the fascism of the far-right – which is not a political speech, but a speech about, as Biden said, the "soul of the nation."
As expected, many Republicans expressed outrage over President Biden calling out the portion of the GOP that identifies as "MAGA," even though he made clear his criticism was not of mainstream Republicans.
One news network's coverage in particular is being highly criticized as several of its reporters took umbrage with President Biden delivering what they wrongly characterized as a "political" speech, while criticizing that two uniformed Marines were standing behind him.
CNN Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny tweeted a photo of the President in front of the Marines, saying: "There’s nothing unusual or wrong with a President delivering a political speech — it’s inherent in the job description — but doing it against a backdrop of two Marines standing at attention and the Marine Band is a break with White House traditions."
Journalist Jamison Foser observed that "Biden is talking about defending democracy and the rule of law from assault by a fascist movement that staged a deadly insurrection. Marines take an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.' Pretty compatible!"
Former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskil (D-MO) slammed Zeleny.
"Are you kidding me Jeff? The last President did official Republican political events at the White House! And used the National Park Service as political event planners. How about political interview inside the Lincoln Memorial? Those are all examples of demolishing WH traditions," she wrote.
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) asked, "Didn’t TFG," referring to Donald Trump, "accept his nomination on the White House lawn?"
"I recall a certain president giving a political speech on a damn aircraft carrier," blasted national security attorney Brad Moss. "I recall another president accepting his political nomination at the WHITE HOUSE. Ask me how little I care about the two marines deep in the background."
The former Communications Director for Senator Amy Klobuchar, Tim Hogan, corrected the record with photographic evidence:
Zeleny was not the only CNN journalist to instigate the ire of Americans watching the President's speech.
"Whatever you think of this speech the military is supposed to be apolitical. Positioning Marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that. It’s wrong when Democrats do it. It’s wrong when Republicans do it," tweeted CNN host Brianna Keilar.
University of South Carolina Political Science Professor David Darmofal corrected Keilar, saying: "It was a speech about defending democracy."
Mary Trump, the former President's niece who is a psychologist, added: "I see everyone at CNN got their talking point. This was NOT a political speech (unless you think condemning fascism and encouraging people to vote are political positions in which case--that's what we call a tell).
CNN wasn't the only news outlet with reporters attracting anger.
CBS News' Ed O'Keefe was also criticized for equating a call to fight fascism and defend democracy as a "political" speech.
O'Keefe characterized the fight for civil rights as partisan politics, which it is not.
Marquette University Political Science Professor Julia Azari, who teaches about the American presidency, American political parties, and the politics of the American state blasted O'Keefe: "This frame undermines both democracy and journalism."
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain graciously challenged O'Keefe:
Dan Froomkin, one of the most credible media critics also slammed O'Keefe.
"Biden is describing a major democratic crisis that actually exists. But political journalists only see a Democrat saying negative things about Republicans and so, you know, both sides," he wrote.
The White House Deputy Press Secretary, Andrew Bates, summed up what many were saying: "Democracy is not a partisan or political issue."
