Category: 3. Business

Wendy’s plans to close hundreds U.S. restaurants over the next few months in an effort to boost its profit.

The Dublin, Ohio-based chain said during a conference call with investors Friday that it planned to begin closing restaurants in the fourth quarter of this year. The company said it expected a “mid-single-digit percentage” of its U.S. stores to be affected, but it didn’t give any more details.

Wendy’s ended the third quarter with 6,011 U.S. restaurants. If 5% of those locations were impacted, it would mean 300 store closures.

The new round of closures comes on top of the closure of 240 U.S. Wendy’s locations in 2024. At the time, Wendy’s said that many of the 55-year-old chain’s restaurants are simply out of date.

Ken Cook, Wendy’s interim CEO, said Friday the company believes closing locations that are underperforming – whether it’s from a financial or customer service perspective – will help improve traffic and profitability at its remaining U.S. restaurants.

Cook became Wendy’s CEO in July after the company’s previous CEO, Kirk Tanner, left to become the president and CEO of Hershey Co.

“When we look at the system today, we have some restaurants that do not elevate the brand and are a drag from a franchisee financial performance perspective. The goal is to address and fix those restaurants,” Cook said during a conference call with investors.

Cook said in some cases, Wendy’s will make improvements to struggling stores, including adding technology or equipment. In other cases, it will transfer ownership to a different operator or close the restaurant altogether.

U.S. fast food chains have been struggling to attract lower-income U.S. consumers in the past few years as inflation has raised prices. In the July-September period, Wendy’s said its U.S. same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, fell 5% compared to the same period last year.

Cook said $5 and $8 meal deals — which have been matched by McDonald’s — have helped bring some traffic back to its U.S. stores. But Wendy’s isn’t doing a good job of bringing in new customers, Cook said, so the company plans to shift its marketing to emphasize its value and the freshness of its ingredients.

Wendy’s shares dropped 7% Friday. On Monday, they were down 6% in afternoon trading.

 

Some of the largest chemical companies in the world—Arkema, BASF, Cargill, Dow, and LG Chemical among them—have attempted to make acrylic acid via a biobased route. It stands to reason that they would. The product is the key raw material for making the superabsorbent polymers found in diapers and incontinence products, which have a reputation for generating a lot of waste. Acrylic acid derivatives are also ubiquitous in acrylic paints and adhesives. To make it from renewable raw materials rather than fossil fuels would be a big win.

“The market has desired a biobased acrylic for quite some time, 20-some-odd years at this point, and no one’s ever made the economics work,” says Christopher P. Nicholas, chief technology officer and cofounder of Låkril Technologies.

Nicholas thinks Låkril has the catalyst that will allow the firm to succeed where others have failed.

The conventional process for making acrylic acid is the oxidation of propylene into acrolein, followed by another oxidation into acrylic acid. This petrochemical pathway is responsible for nearly all the 7 million metric tons (t) of acrylic acid produced annually around the world.

Companies have attempted two main routes to a biobased alternative, both involving dehydration of a monomer made via sugar fermentation. One—tried by firms such as BASF, Cargill, and Dow—starts with 3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP). The other is based on lactic acid, a pathway that Cargill is investigating with technology licensed from the diaper producer Procter & Gamble.

The lactic acid route has its appeal. 3-HP is not made in significant quantities, whereas lactic acid has been commercially produced via fermentation since the 1880s, Nicholas points out. Today, about 2 million t of it is made annually by companies like Cargill and Corbion via fermentation of sugars from corn or other local crops. The lactic is then used to produce derivatives such as the biobased polymer polylactic acid.

The chemistry of lactic acid is challenging, however. “The two molecules—the feedstock lactic acid and the product acrylic acid—are probably two of the most reactive molecules I’ve had to work with over the course of my career,” Nicholas says. “Both of them love to polymerize, and it’s why they’re essentially good monomers, but it’s also quite a pain to work with them in the lab.”

In addition, being an α-hydroxy acid, lactic acid is more difficult to dehydrate than 3-HP, which is a β-hydroxy acid. This obstacle is a reason that, despite the commercial availability of lactic acid, many firms have pursued a 3-HP route.

Låkril’s catalyst gives the lactic acid route the advantage by achieving dehydration better than any previous effort had, according to Nicholas. The catalyst was discovered in 2020 at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities lab of chemical engineer Paul J. Dauenhauer, a Låkril cofounder. Dauenhauer had been working on improvements to zeolite catalysts for the transformation of lactates into acrylates. He found that bifunctional zeolite catalysts with engineered bases could control the dehydration of α-hydroxy acids with high efficiency.

Nicholas says the catalyst produces acrylic acid at a yield of 90%. Previous efforts at dehydration of lactic acid achieved yields of only 80–85%.

“The largest contributor to the cash cost of production of bio-acrylic acid is the lactic acid,” Nicholas says. “You can’t afford to throw any of the feedstock away as off-spec product. So the biggest thing that you need is high selectivity.”

Nicholas contends that its more efficient catalyst makes Låkril’s process competitive with even the petrochemical route. A plant using Låkril’s catalyst to produce 40,000 t of acrylic acid per year would have cost parity with a propylene-based plant, he says.

With their promising catalyst in hand, Dauenhauer and Nicholas formed Låkril in 2021. Later that year, the start-up won the Consider Corn Challenge, a contest sponsored by the National Corn Growers Association. In 2022, the firm raised money in a preseed funding round led by Iowa Corn. Låkril has also been awarded over $2 million in federally funded research grants from the US Departments of Energy and Agriculture, as well as from the US National Science Foundation.

Earlier this year, Låkril closed a $3.2 million seed funding round, bringing its total funding to approximately $7 million. With that round came a well-connected backer: GC Ventures America, the venture capital arm of the Thai petrochemical giant PTT Global Chemical. PTT owns Allnex, a coating resin maker that uses acrylic resins. PTT also is a 50% shareholder in NatureWorks, a polylactic acid joint venture with Cargill. Låkril aims to pursue a series A financing round in 2026.

Later this year, the company will start up a continuously operating pilot plant in Chicago that will have the capacity to produce 4 kg of acrylic acid per day. In addition to fine-tuning Låkril’s process for scale-up, the plant will provide sample quantities to acrylic acid users. To assist the company as it begins commercialization, it has hired Justin Brown as CEO. Brown is an energy industry veteran, with experience at Honeywell UOP.

Låkril’s long-term vision is to license its technology and provide the catalyst to a third party that would build the first plant, perhaps a demonstration plant that produces 1–10 t per day. If Låkril reaches that stage, it will have succeeded where for decades many larger firms have fallen short.

Peptobiotics founder and CEO Jonathan Bester comes from an oil family; his father and two uncles are in the industry. And at one point, while working at an algae biotechnology start-up, Bester hoped to disrupt the oil industry with environmentally sustainable alternatives.

But when that company pivoted, Bester took matters into his own hands and decided to start his own firm. He wanted to find a green solution to a modern problem; his idea was to replace commonly used antibiotics in animal agriculture with microorganism-derived antimicrobial peptides.

Human pathogens are becoming more resistant to antimicrobials, in part because of the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture to prevent disease and promote growth. But microbes have been at war with one another for resources since the dawn of life on Earth, and they produce their own antimicrobial peptides—peptides Bester thought could be useful in an agricultural setting.

Pursuing that idea meant leaving his home in the UK. “Europe just was not a suitable place to start this kind of company, because the route to market takes so long,” he says. “So I moved to Southeast Asia.”

Bester landed in Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, and it was exceptionally difficult to build a new base of operations. He was briefly connected with a cofounder in a collaboration that didn’t end up working out. “I was a little bit lost,” Bester says. “I needed someone who could help me build the technology. And so I asked another entrepreneur . . . who introduced me to a promising PhD student who was just graduating.”

That student was Jhee Hong Koh, now Peptobiotics’ R&D lead. “I spent 5 years of my PhD obsessed over protein production and fat production,” Koh says. “John came to my PhD lab, and I met him in the middle of an experiment.” The two had instant chemistry and joined up after Koh graduated.

In time, Koh helped Bester identify peptides that could kill common agricultural pathogens and engineer a microorganism to produce heaps of the peptides in a fermentation facility. That led to winning Singapore’s Sinergy seed grant (as Vaciome, the company’s name at the time) in 2021, the Slingshot global start-up pitching competition in 2022, and $6.2 million in series A funding from food industry and other investors in 2024.

Peptobiotics has now delivered the first of its peptides to aquaculture facilities across Southeast Asia. In trials, shrimp infected with a pathogen and treated with the peptides had between 3 and 10 times the survival rate of those not treated. In the field, the company’s partners say the peptides compete with or perform better than best-in-class antibiotics, according to Bester.

What remains to be seen is if agricultural pathogens develop resistance to Peptobiotics’ peptides. This shouldn’t matter from a human perspective, as nothing like these peptides is used to treat infections in people, and Bester says he has no plans to develop them into a human medicine down the road.

While Peptobiotics’ lead product came on the market this year, scaling up remains a challenge. “We have this huge sell sheet of people wanting more product, but we’re bottlenecked on supply,” Bester says.

The company is working with contract manufacturers to produce more product, but Koh says that scaling up leads to new synthetic biology challenges. “The biology of running fermentation in a lab is just so different than in a 50-ton, 100-ton, 30-ton bioreactor,” he says. “The challenges to make fermentation for our peptides work requires lots of back and forth, lots of learning from both parties.”

Bester says that most of the world’s fermentation industry is in Asia, particularly China, so there’s expertise and capacity to make large-scale manufacturing possible. But that concentration also means multiple competitors in the region, though Bester says Peptobiotics’ products are the best of the bunch.

If the firm can overcome its manufacturing challenges, Bester could fulfill his vision of a full-fledged, environmentally sustainable business. But that alone won’t mean success. “I don’t think we would survive as a company if we were just pitching sustainability,” Bester says. He thinks customers want the product because it works.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have developed a new approach for identifying individuals with skin cancer that combines genetic ancestry, lifestyle and social determinants of health using a machine learning model. Their model, more accurate than existing approaches, also helped the researchers better characterize disparities in skin cancer risk and outcomes.

Skin cancer is among the most common cancers in the United States, with more than 9,500 new cases diagnosed every day and approximately two deaths from skin cancer occurring every hour. One important component of reducing the burden of skin cancer is risk prediction, which utilizes technology and patient information to help doctors decide which individuals should be prioritized for cancer screening.

Traditional risk prediction tools, such as risk calculators based on family history, skin type and sun exposure, have historically performed best in people of European ancestry because they are more represented in the data used to develop these models. This leaves significant gaps in early detection for other populations, particularly those with darker skin, who are less likely to be of European ancestry. As a result, skin cancer in people of non-European ancestry is frequently diagnosed at later stages when it is more difficult to treat. As a consequence of later stage detection, people of non-European ancestry also tend to have worse overall outcomes from skin cancer.

To help correct this disparity, the researchers analyzed data from more than 400,000 participants in the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, a nationwide initiative aimed at building a diverse database of patient data to inform new, more inclusive studies on a variety of health conditions. By leveraging the participants in the All of Us program, the researchers were able to ensure the data they used had substantial representation from African, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, and mixed-ancestry populations.

Key findings from the study include:

• The new model includes both genetic and non-genetic determinants, including lifestyle choices, socioeconomic variables and medication usage to stratify individuals based on their likelihood of having skin cancer.

  
  
  

• The model achieved 89% accuracy in identifying individuals with skin cancer across all populations, with 90% accuracy for individuals of European ancestry and 81% accuracy for people of non-European ancestry.

• In a subset of participants who had genetic data but were missing data on lifestyle and social determinants of health, the model still retained 87% accuracy.

• Genetic ancestry, especially the proportion of European ancestry, was a strong predictor of risk; individuals of European ancestry were at least 8 times more likely to be diagnosed with skin cancer.

The new model is best framed as a clinical case-finding aid, meaning it can help identify people who should receive full-body skin exams from a dermatologist. This could help enable earlier diagnosis in individuals with darker skin tones, potentially alleviating current disparities in skin cancer outcomes. Additionally, their model may be adaptable to other diseases, paving the way for more equitable, personalized medicine for all. 

The study, published in Nature Communications, was led by Matteo D’Antonio, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, and Kelly A. Frazer, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Frazer is also a member of UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. The research was supported by the American Cancer Society, the National Institutes of Health and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The researchers declare no competing interests.

The recent decision of the Upper Tribunal (UT) in Almacantar Centre Point Nominee No.1 Ltd & Anor v Penelope de Valk & Others [2025] UKUT 298 (LC) offers clarity on how courts will interpret the recovery of cladding remediation cost through service charges under the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA 2022).

The Facts

Almacantar Centre Point Nominees No.1 Limited and Almacantar Centre Point Nominee No.2 Limited (Almacantar) are the freehold owners of Centre Point House, 15A St Giles High Street London WC2H 8LW (CPH). Around 1987 a substantial part of CPH, which was constructed in the 1960s, was converted into residential leasehold flats and it currently comprises 36 duplex flats.

CPH has a hardwood timber-framed window façade, which has deteriorated over several years. Almacantar proposed a scheme to address the deterioration of the façade and sought a determination from the First Tier Tribunal (FTT), as to liability for the costs of the proposed works to remedy the defective façade.

The FTT held that the proposed works did fall within the landlord’s repairing obligations, and the leaseholders would be liable under the service charge provision to contribute to the remediation costs. However, the FTT found that several of the leaseholders, who held qualifying leases, were entitled to rely on the “leaseholder protections” under the BSA 2022 and were not required to pay any part of the service charge attributable to “cladding remediation”.

Almacantar appealed the decision.

Upper Tribunal Decision

Relevant Defect

A central issue for the UT was whether paragraph 8 of Schedule 8 of the BSA 2022, which exempts qualifying leaseholders from paying service charges for cladding remediation should be interpreted independently of sections 116 and 122 of the BSA 2022. These sections provide that only certain service charges linked to “relevant defects” are not payable; “relevant defects” would include works carried out in a 30-year period from when the provision came into force, so from 28 June 1992.

The UT held that Paragraph 8 is clear and unambiguous, it protects qualifying leaseholders from payment of the cost of remediation of unsafe cladding. Paragraph 8 was not limited by reference to “relevant defect”, and no additional qualification should be read into it.

The UT held that although other parts of the BSA 2022 provide a structured package of leaseholder protections to the 30-year limit, paragraph 8 operates separately and does not fall within that package of remediation. It was held that Paragraph 8 mitigates against the time-limit in respect of unsafe cladding.

Cladding System or Not?

Almacantar raised a technical argument that the façade of CPH is not separate cladding, which could form part of any “cladding system” under Paragraph 8 of Schedule 8 BSA 2022. They argued that the façade at CPH is not an outer skin, instead it forms the exterior of the building itself. Accordingly, the proposed works would not constitute cladding remediation works.

The UT held that the question of whether a building includes cladding is one of fact. The requirement under Paragraph 8 that cladding remediation involves the “outer wall of an external wall system” does not require two separate systems. It was held that the FTT correctly classified CPH’s cladding as a cladding system.

Meaning of Unsafe

The definition of cladding remediation under Paragraph 8 of Schedule 8 of the BSA 2022 includes the removal or replacement of any part of a cladding system that is “unsafe”. Almacantar argued that the term “unsafe” should be narrowly interpreted to mean inherently unsafe cladding, primarily posing a fire risk and should not cover cladding becoming unsafe over time through degradation or structural decay over time. A broader interpretation, they said would have sweeping consequences, capturing many older buildings, which they claimed Parliament could not have intended.

The UT held that the use of the term “unsafe” is broader than a limitation to fire risk, they agreed with the FTT that unsafe means something more than simply out of repair and encompasses a range of threats to building safety, residents and the public. In this case evidence showed serious degradation at CPH, including loose panels, failing timber and compromised external seals which created a real safety risk.

Qualifying Leases

The status of the leases was initially uncertain, however, the FTT relied on the presumption outlined in paragraph 13 of Schedule 8 BSA 2022 and determined that the leaseholders held “qualifying leases” as defined in section 119 of the BSA 2022. As a result, they were entitled to the protections afforded to qualifying leaseholders. Almacantar argued that the FTT had wrongly made an unqualified factual finding about which leaseholders held qualifying leases, instead of merely applying the presumption. On this point, the UT held that the FTT’s application of the presumption stands.

Almacanter did not take any action to challenge this presumption, such as requesting a “leaseholder deed of certificate” from the tenants in accordance with the Building Safety (Leaseholder Protections) (Information etc) (England) Regulations 2022.

Takeaways

• The UT has confirmed that leaseholder protections under the BSA 2022 stretch further than many expected, meaning cladding remediation costs may be more likely to sit with landlords.
• Paragraph 8 of Schedule 8 BSA 2022 is a clear standalone shield, meaning that qualifying leaseholders cannot be charged for cladding remediation costs irrespective of the defect’s age.
• Early due diligence and legal input are critical. Landlords should review lease terms now, request the “leaseholder deed of certificate” early and challenge qualifying lease status where possible to limit future exposure.
• Permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal has been granted, which will provide landlords with further certainty on the position.

AMES, Iowa – From the surface of the moon to the fields of Iowa, the Soil Machine Dynamics Laboratory at Iowa State University applies innovative science to solve problems. 

Laboratory Director Mehari Tekeste, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, works closely with students, industry and government agencies to better understand interactions between machinery and soil resources. Any given day, that can include wear-testing equipment design and research for space excavation missions or researching levels of soil compaction to expect from agricultural tires. 

Harvesting water from the moon

If the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration finalizes plans to harvest water from the moon, they will likely rely on approaches for calculations of ground engaging tools research from the SMDL. The recent NASA-funded study predicted wear rates for a chisel to harvest water trapped in icy regoliths (layers of unconsolidated rocky material covering bedrock). The project was led by Zamir Syed, with the California company Singularity Solutions, one of Tekeste’s first graduate students, in collaboration with Tekeste and Paul Schafbuch, professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State.  

A bin of unique soil that Tekeste’s team developed helped simulate characteristics of the moon’s surface conditions. Their modeling challenges included that the chisel tool needed to work in a vacuum and under extreme temperature fluctuations. Data from the tests helped validate modeling to predict how the tool would wear, how long it could be expected to operate and how many of the tools would be needed. Their results were highlighted in a recent issue of Earth and Space on Engineering for Extreme Environments. 

“That was a fascinating project,” Tekeste said. “It was also exciting to work on solving a big challenge like this with a former student, whose company landed the grant.” 

Currently, Tekeste is part of a multi-institutional group reviewing specs of mobility studies on extreme deformable surfaces for a new autonomous vehicle that is part of NASA’s Artemis mission for Mars exploration. 

Studying soil compaction in Iowa

Closer to home, projects have focused on precision tillage and soil compaction, two faces of soil-machine systems for Iowa agriculture. These include gauging the benefits of inflation and deflation flexible agricultural tires on soil compaction and crop yield and studying the impacts of soil compaction caused by pipeline-related construction equipment in Iowa fields. A recent SMDL study showed that farm cultivator sweep wear was significantly better for a new edge-hardened sweep, compared to the standard sweeps farmers have been using. The lab’s modeling also predicted using the optimized sweeps would result in yield improvements from precision seed-bed establishment. Tekeste now has three grants from different companies to perform similar farm equipment testing on soft soil conditions. 

“Primarily, we serve as an independent testing center that provides scientific data to develop and validate predictive models for decision-making within the grower-machinery equipment manufacture chain,” Tekeste said. 

“It was a bright new day when Dr. Tekeste arrived on campus in 2015 to revitalize the area of soil dynamics that was once a prominent area of research at Iowa State,” according to alumnus Robert Schafer, now retired from USDA ARS. His remarks came during a symposium Tekeste coordinated in May on terramechanics in agricultural soil-vehicle systems. Schafer credited Tekeste with carrying on a legacy of innovative agricultural engineering faculty who led work in the 1950s to improve machine design by better understanding soil-machine behavior. 

“We now have three soil testing bins designed for different purposes. They are a reason people want our help at Iowa State,” Tekeste said. He has created his own artificial soil that provides a controlled environment to test machinery-soil interactions of tires and tracks. He has also developed other tools, like a special penetrometer for on-the-go measurement of soil compaction.

A 2025 project, conducted with doctoral student John Sheriff, agricultural and biosystems engineering, used the soil bins to investigate soil and crop yield impacts from self-propelled sprayer tires equipped with Very High Flexion (VF) agricultural radial tires, that carry 40% more load at the same inflation pressure than standard radial tires. Their key findings were reported in Applied Engineering in Agriculture: 

• Reduced tire inflation pressures for the VF tires created shallower rut depths and bigger contact area, signaling reduced potential for long-term soil compaction.
• Reduced tire inflation also maximized yield potential, as compared to the conventional higher operating tire inflation pressures on self-propelled standard radial tire inflation pressure settings. 

In addition to NASA, support for the lab’s diverse projects has come from private companies, including John Deere, Caterpillar, Vermeer, agricultural tire manufacturers (Micheline, Titan, Firestone, Alliance, CFI), tillage equipment manufacturers (USM Wear Technologies, Yetter, Orthmann, Unverferth, Bourgault Tillage Tools) and from the Iowa State Association of Counties, the USDA Agricultural Research Service and USDA Hatch research funds.

“Farmers in Iowa and beyond can greatly benefit from the SMDL’s research,” said Kapil Arora, field agricultural engineer with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. “That is especially true related to the work studying soil compaction from heavy equipment and ways to avoid it. Soil compaction can significantly impact crop yields, as it can push soil particles together, reducing soil infiltration capacities and increasing resistance to crop root penetration and development.” 

Attend soil compaction school Nov. 14

For farmers or ag retailers interested in learning more, Arora and Tekeste will lead a soil compaction school Nov. 14, near Boone. Find more details and registration information on the Soil Compaction School website. Sponsors of the event include the Iowa Pork Producers Association, the Iowa Corn Growers Association, CNH Industrial and the Elder Corporation. 

Contacts: 

Mehari Tekeste, Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, 515-294-2464, mtekeste@iastate.edu
Kapil Arora, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, 515-291-0174, pbtiger@iastate.edu
Ann Y. Robinson, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Communications, 515-294-3066, ayr@iastate.edu 

The Port of Aberdeen has announced it is to make job cuts in the face of what it described as a “staggering” fall in North Sea oil and gas activity.

Chief executive Bob Sanguinetti said there would be “a small reduction in roles” after activity dropped by 25% over the summer months.

He said the port was also seeking voluntary redundancies as part of a process to reduce costs and restructure the organisation.

Mr Sanguinetti said the company remained committed to “growing and diversifying” its activity.

“We will continue to support our team through this difficult but necessary process, while maintaining safe and effective operations across the port,” said Mr Sanguinetti

“Oil and gas activity is down 10% year to date, and a staggering 25% over the summer months, with this trend forecast to continue next year.”

He added: “We face challenges as this rate of decline is outpacing the growth and diversification of activity at South Harbour.

“Offshore wind is the major opportunity on the horizon, however, activity at scale remains a distant prospect for the region.”

The input of a pharmacist is crucial to proper therapy selection for the treatment of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), as they can provide patient education to improve treatment adherence and aid oncologists with frontline treatment choices, especially as new agents continue to emerge, according to Jose Tinajero, PharmD, BCOP.

“Pharmacists are uniquely equipped to not only counsel and educate patients on the importance of adherence to therapy, but [we can] also help identify and mitigate toxicities associated with these agents,” Tinajero, a bone marrow transplant and hematology clinical pharmacist at City of Hope in Duarte, California, said in an interview with OncLive®. “Additionally, we provide valuable support and collaboration with advanced practice providers and visiting teams regarding sequencing, selection, and even switching therapies.”

In the interview, Tinajero discussed his approach to frontline TKI selection, strategies to enhance patient treatment adherence, how pharmacists aid in the implementation of new agents and formulations, and the importance of the pharmacist-oncologist relationship in treating patients with CML.

OncLive: Within the CML space, there are several TKIs approved across the spectrum, with other potentially on the way. With all these options, how do you approach selecting the right agent for the right patient?

Tinajero: CML management has evolved since the development of the first-generation TKI, imatinib [Gleevec].¹ Now we have second-generation options such as dasatinib [Sprycel] and nilotinib [Tasigna], third-generation options like ponatinib [Iclusig], and allosteric inhibitors such as asciminib [Scemblix].^2-5

The current treatment landscape focuses on frontline TKI selection, considering factors such as patient risk scores, age, and comorbidities, like cardiovascular risk. We also account for drug-drug and drug-food interactions, as well as [treatment] adherence.

What strategies help to ensure patient adherence, and how do you adjust when patients struggle to stay on treatment?

Our role is to educate and empower patients about the importance of consistent medication use. If patients struggle due to interactions, toxicities, or adverse effects, we counsel them and work to mitigate these issues. When toxicities become burdensome, we may switch patients to more tolerable options. Ongoing follow-up and communication between patients and the care team are key to maintaining adherence.

In terms of dose optimization and adjustments—keeping patients on effective therapy while minimizing toxicity—how do you approach this, and how do you work with oncologists and patients to achieve the right balance?

Pharmacists in CML Treatment Planning and Management: Key Takeaways

• Pharmacists play a vital role in CML management—supporting oncologists with frontline TKI selection based on patient-specific factors such as comorbidities, drug interactions, and adherence considerations.

• Education and adherence monitoring are central to pharmacist involvement, as they counsel patients on proper medication use, manage toxicities, and coordinate therapy adjustments to maintain treatment continuity and tolerability.

• Collaboration across the multidisciplinary team enhances outcomes, with pharmacists contributing to dose optimization, new agent implementation, and ongoing education for providers in both academic and community settings.

Dose optimization is critical. We aim to minimize therapy interruptions and manage interactions. Some TKIs have meal-related requirements—for example, some are best taken on an empty stomach, while others should be taken with food for proper absorption.

Drug-drug interactions are also important, particularly since many patients with CML are older and often on multiple medications. Pharmacists help screen for interactions to prevent overdosing or underdosing. Many factors contribute to maintaining optimal dosing.

How important is the multidisciplinary team in ensuring effective treatment planning and patient management from diagnosis through treatment completion?

This is a long journey. We assess milestones at [approximately] 3, 6, and 12 months. Having a multidisciplinary team is essential—pharmacists counsel patients and provide expertise on drug therapies, and advanced practice providers, physicians, nurses, and other health care [team] members reinforce these concepts. An all-hands-on-deck approach ensures optimal outcomes, as shown across various studies.

Although the role of TKIs has been established in CML, new approvals continue to emerge and shake up the treatment paradigm. When new agents become available, what role do you play in education and implementation?

When new agents reach the market, we’re involved in onboarding and ensuring their safe and appropriate use. This includes educating nursing staff, specialty pharmacists, physicians, and advanced practice providers through in-services and training sessions. We also participate in pharmacy and therapeutics committees to evaluate new agents and place them appropriately in treatment pathways based on clinical trial data.

I encourage my colleagues to stay equally involved in these efforts, as education and collaboration are key.

For community oncologists who may not have the same level of daily interaction with pharmacists as those in academic centers, what is the importance of that relationship?

Community oncologists can greatly benefit from pharmacy support. Many centers are now incorporating clinical pharmacists into decision-making, counseling, and education. Pharmacists can assist with prior authorizations for newer agents, identify and manage drug interactions, and help address toxicities.

Having a strong pharmacist-oncologist relationship enhances patient safety and outcomes, and there’s significant opportunity for growth in this area within community settings.

References

1. Cohen MH, Williams G, Johnson JR, et al. Approval summary for imatinib mesylate capsules in the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia. Clin Cancer Res. 2002;8(5):935-942
2. Sprycel. Prescribing information. Bristol Myers Squibb. 2024. Accessed November 7, 2025. https://packageinserts.bms.com/pi/pi_sprycel.pdf
3. Tasigna. Prescribing information. Novartis. 2024. Accessed November 7, 2025. https://www.novartis.com/us-en/sites/novartis_us/files/tasigna.pdf
4. Iclusig. Prescribing information. Takeda. 2024. Accessed November 7, 2025. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2024/203469s037lbl.pdf
5. Scemblix. Prescribing information. Novartis. 2024. Accessed November 7, 2025. https://www.novartis.com/us-en/sites/novartis_us/files/scemblix.pdf

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Rachel Reeves risks hurting small business owners and damaging investor confidence in the UK if she goes ahead with proposals to increase taxes on dividends in this month’s Budget, wealth managers and bankers have warned.

The chancellor is considering raising dividend taxes on November 26, in a move that the Resolution Foundation think-tank has said would raise £1.5bn, according to people familiar with the situation.

The deliberations come as the Treasury looks to fill a fiscal hole estimated at between £20bn and £30bn in the Budget, with a wide range of tax rises under consideration.

Individuals who earn dividends from a wide range of stocks and shares pay a tax on those earnings according to income bands. At present, basic rate taxpayers are charged 8.75 per cent, with higher rate taxpayers paying 33.75 per cent and additional rate payers charged 39.35 per cent.

In a report in September, the Resolution Foundation said the basic rate of dividend tax was “too low” compared with other UK taxes such as capital gains — at 18 per cent for basic rate — and rates set by international peers.

The influential think-tank called for the basic rate of dividend tax to rise to 16.5 per cent, which would generate an extra £1.5bn for the Treasury.

The Treasury declined to comment. People familiar with the matter said Reeves was considering an increase smaller than the rise to 16.5 per cent urged by the think-tank.

But Jason Hollands, managing director at wealth manager Evelyn Partners, said increasing dividend tax rates would “clobber small business owners” because many took a large portion of their pay through dividends.

“This will be seen as a kick in the teeth to people who take a risk by running their own businesses,” he added.

In addition to business owners, the potential changes would hit investors holding stocks outside of tax-free wrappers such as Isas and pensions.

Emma Wall, chief investment strategist at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the prospect of higher dividend taxes “seems counter to the government’s great initiatives to encourage retail flows, and in turn, domestic investment to spur economic growth”.

Any move to increase dividend taxes would be another blow to investors after the previous Conservative government cut the annual tax-free dividend allowance to £500 from April 2024, down from £1,000 the year before and from £5,000 in 2017-18.

Steven Fine, chief executive of investment bank and broker Peel Hunt, said higher dividend taxes would “be a sure fire way of raising less tax”, with companies able to pare back dividend payouts and instead use excess capital to buy back their own shares.

Ministers have sought to encourage pension funds and retail investors to back British companies in a bid to revive the UK’s moribund capital markets, with Reeves exploring in recent months a cut in the cash Isa allowance in order to funnel more money into stocks.

But Sanjiv Tumkur, head of equities at wealth manager Rathbones, said higher dividend taxes “could discourage investment in income stocks” that were “well represented in the UK market”.

“If investors begin shifting away from income stocks, they may turn to growth stocks instead . . . This could result in capital flowing out of the UK market in search of better growth opportunities abroad,” he added.

TAMPA, Fla. — Spain’s Sateliot announced plans Nov. 10 to develop upgraded satellites from newly expanded facilities in Barcelona, aiming to move beyond connecting sensors and machines to provide voice, video and data links directly to smartphones.

The first 16 150-kilogram satellites are slated to launch in 2027 to demonstrate the capability in certain areas for a few minutes at a time, a spokesperson told SpaceNews, before scaling to provide real-time coverage by 2030.

Sateliot aims to first deploy five more 15-kilogram spacecraft in 2026, bolstering a connectivity service for Internet of Things (IoT) devices using global 5G standards known as 3GPP.

The startup said last month it had achieved a narrowband connection for the first time between one of its four operational low Earth orbit satellites, provided by Bulgaria’s EnduroSat, and a commercial IoT device operating under Release 17 of this standard.

“The ultimate goal is to build a global network of hundreds of satellites to deliver 5G IoT and New Radio (NR) connectivity for real time, low latency dual-use (civil and defense) applications,” the spokesperson said via email.

Sateliot has lodged plans with international regulators to deploy up to 500 satellites.

The upgraded satellites, called Tritó, would be built at the venture’s newly opened European 5G Satellite Development Center at its Barcelona headquarters, which includes a 100-square-meter clean room.

Announcing the center’s inauguration Nov. 10, Sateliot, which counts the Spanish government among its investors, said the start of its industrial phase reinforces Europe’s leadership and technological sovereignty in 5G IoT connectivity from space.

The venture also reaffirmed a goal to reach one billion euros ($1.16 billion) in annual revenue by 2030, following the start of commercial services next year, after signing recurring contracts worth 250 million euros with more than 450 customers across 50 countries.

Last week, U.S.-based direct-to-device rival AST SpaceMobile said it had registered plans for a European sovereign network in partnership with U.K.-based telecoms giant Vodafone.

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