- FDA approves first treatment for skin condition that causes persistent wounds, a redosable gene therapy STAT
- Krystal’s Vyjuvek becomes first topical gene therapy with FDA nod to treat rare skin disease FiercePharma
- Rare Skin Blistering Condition Gets First Drug Approved Medpage Today
- Landmark victory for individuals living with DEB and their families, the FDA announced their approval of Krystal Biotech’s VYJUVEK™ for the treatment of Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (DEB). Business Wire
- FDA Approves First-Ever Topical Gene Therapy Medscape
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Persistent
UK researchers cure man with persistent Covid for over a year
After further tests in February 2021 and January 2022 came back positive, the team in London carried out a genetic analysis of the virus, which showed that the same strain was present at each stage, with only minor variations — meaning that the patient was suffering from a chronic coronavirus infection, rather than multiple new infections.
Chronic coronavirus infection is distinct from long covid, in which people suffer from persistent symptoms and long-term effects after being infected with the virus that causes covid-19.
“Nowadays, everyone is infected with omicron, but when we looked at his virus, it was something that existed a long time ago — way before omicron, way before delta and even before alpha. So it was one of those older, early variants from the beginning of the pandemic,” Luke Blagdon Snell, a specialist in infectious diseases and a researcher on the case, told The Washington Post on Friday.
Because the patient was experiencing only mild or intermittent symptoms, he had been ineligible for treatments used to prevent or treat severe covid.
The results of the genetic sequencing showed that the man had been infected with the B.1.177.18 coronavirus variant, which was present in Britain in late 2020. The team was therefore able to give the patient a combined antibody treatment shown to be effective against that strain.
The case was among several highlighted by Snell and the team of researchers from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and the Department of Infectious Diseases at King’s College London in a preprint article published in the peer-reviewed Clinical Infectious Diseases journal on Thursday.
Although the more-recent variants now dominant in Britain do not respond to the antibodies used in this case, the findings show the potential for individualized therapies in patients with chronic coronavirus infections. The process of genome sequencing outlined in the paper offers results within 24 hours, allowing medical teams to respond quickly to patients’ needs.
In two other cases highlighted in the report, genetic sequencing showed that patients suspected to be suffering from prolonged infection had in fact been reinfected with a newer strain of the virus. Their doctors were therefore able to alter their treatment plans accordingly.
Genome sequencing has been used throughout the pandemic to identify new variants and sub-strains, such as omicron, which was first detected by scientists in southern Africa in November 2021.
It is unclear how prevalent chronic coronavirus infections are. The longest case known to date was in a patient who tested positive for 505 days before dying and was treated by the same teams.
“But there’s definitely a difference between a normal community infection which resolves within two weeks,” as happens in most cases, and the small proportion of immunocompromised patients who are at risk of a chronic infection lasting more than six weeks, said Snell.
Among persistent infections, he said, there are two groups: those, like the man who was cured, who are relatively asymptomatic, and others who face more-serious outcomes.
Any long-term infection will affect the body, but even asymptomatic cases can prove dangerous: “We do know that some people, even after several months, if they have this persistent infection, can deteriorate at a later date.”
And even though cases of chronic infection are rare, high levels of infection mean that vulnerable patients are more likely to be infected and potentially develop chronic infections, he added.
The aim of future research in this area is to collect enough data on persistent infections to identify new treatment options — an issue that has become all the more important given new variants’ increasing resistance to antiviral treatments, Snell said.
Northeast struggling through persistent drought conditions
Photos of the drought in the Northeast look as if they’ve been taken in the Desert Southwest. Major rivers in the region have dropped to their lowest levels in local memory, with certain tributaries of the Boston area’s Charles River drying up entirely as locals find themselves able to walk across normally swift-moving rivers.
“We are walking on the river. We could walk across it with the right boots,” Boston-area photographer Fran Gardino told CBS News. “If you come here normally the river is flowing rapidly down here. It’s so strong you couldn’t stand in here.”
Extreme drought is plaguing much of eastern Massachusetts, including Boston, as well as parts of southern and eastern Rhode Island. Under the Federal U.S. Drought Monitor’s drought classification system, there’s just one level worse.
Not a single part of Massachusetts or Rhode Island is free of drought. Extreme drought, which the Drought Monitor warns can cause an extreme reduction of flow in rivers as well as widespread crop loss, has overtaken 24.5 percent of Massachusetts and 33.63 percent of Rhode Island.
Last month was Boston fourth-driest July on record, yielding just 0.62 inches of rain recorded compared with its average July rainfall total of 3.27 inches.
In Providence, R.I., just 0.46 inches of rain were tallied in July, well below the normal of 2.91 inches. On Aug. 9, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee (D) issued a statewide drought advisory recommending that local residents prepare for an extended period of dry weather.
“As a precaution, I encourage residents and businesses to consider taking water conservation measures,” McKee said in a news release.
Numerous municipalities in Massachusetts have instituted mandatory water restrictions, limiting the number of days each week on which watering is allowed.
The drought is not localized to Massachusetts and Rhode Island — it’s regionwide. Parts of New Jersey, New York City and areas all the way up through coastal Maine are experiencing at least moderate drought. Drought conditions also extend farther into the interior Northeast, into all of New Hampshire, nearly all of Vermont and as far west as areas along Lake Ontario in New York.
Some rainfall is expected in the region on Thursday and Friday, though exactly how much is rather unclear, with the two most reliable weather models providing diverging guidance.
The last few runs of the American (GFS) model have trended back toward a rainier solution, with up to 2.5 inches of rain forecast across rain-needy parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It also has some much-needed precipitation reaching as far inland as New Hampshire and Vermont.
The European model remains less generous, however, restricting the significant rainfall much closer to the coast and generally north of Massachusetts.
Any rain that falls in the region would certainly be welcome, even if the GFS trends toward a drier, European-like solution. If a wetter, GFS-like solution occurs, it will not be enough to allow most of the region to escape from drought.
“I think we’re probably going to be in this for a while, and it’s going to take a lot,” Ted Diers, an assistant director of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services water division, told the Associated Press. “What we really are hoping for is a wet fall followed by a very snowy winter to really recharge the aquifers and the groundwater.”
Vermont farmer Brian Kemp told the AP that drought conditions have made it harder for his large herd of cattle to find enough grazing.
“Farming is challenging,” Kemp said, “and it’s becoming even more challenging as climate change takes place.”
Dairy farms in Vermont are a $2 billion per year industry, and drought in the region has meant this year’s yield and quality of hay are both low, making life difficult for farmers who need hay to feed their livestock.
Rhode Island farmer Milan Adams told the AP that many of his fields are covered in a layer of dry powdery soil, which makes for tough hay farming.
“The height of the hay was there, but there was no volume to it. From there, we got a little bit of rain in the beginning of May that kind of shot it up,” he said. “We haven’t seen anything since.”
Persistent loss of smell due to COVID-19 may better predict long-term cognitive, functional impairment
New insights into factors that may predict, increase or protect against the impact of COVID-19 and the pandemic on memory and thinking skills were revealed by multiple studies reported today at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference® (AAIC®) 2022 in San Diego and virtually.
Among the key findings reported at AAIC 2022:
- A group from Argentina found that persistent loss of the sense of smell may be a better predictor of long-term cognitive and functional impairment than severity of the initial COVID-19 disease.
- Hospitalization in the intensive care unit was associated with double the risk of dementia in older adults, according to a study by Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago.
- During the pandemic, female gender, not working and lower socioeconomic status were associated with more cognitive symptoms in a large study population drawn from nine Latin American countries.
- In that same Latin American population, experiencing a positive life change during the pandemic (such as more quality time with friends and family or spending more time in nature) reduced the negative impact of the pandemic on memory and thinking skills.
“COVID-19 has sickened and killed millions of people around the world, and for some, the emerging research suggests there are long-term impacts on memory and thinking as well,” said Heather M. Snyder, Ph.D., vice president of medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s Association. “As this virus will likely be with us for a long time, identifying the risk and protective factors for cognitive symptoms can assist with the treatment and prevention of ‘long COVID’ moving forward.”
Persistent loss of smell better predicts cognitive impairment than severity of COVID-19
Researchers in Argentina working with the Alzheimer’s Association Consortium on Chronic Neuropsychiatric Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection followed 766 adults age 55-95 exposed to COVID-19 for one year, and conducted a series of regular physical, cognitive and neuropsychiatric tests. Of the study group, 88.4% were infected and 11.6% were controls.
Clinical assessment showed functional memory impairment in two-thirds of the infected participants, which was severe in half of them. Another group of cognitive tests identified three groups with decreased performance:
- 11.7% showed memory-only impairment.
- 8.3% had impairment in attention and executive function.
- 11.6% displayed multidomain (including memory, learning, attention and executive function) impairment.
Statistical analysis revealed that persistent loss of smell was a significant predictor of cognitive impairment, but severity of the initial COVID-19 disease was not.
The more insight we have into what causes or at least predicts who will experience the significant long-term cognitive impact of COVID-19 infection, the better we can track it and begin to develop methods to prevent it.”
Gabriela Gonzalez-Aleman, LCP, Ph.D., Professor, Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina, Buenos Aires
A stay in the intensive care unit may signal higher dementia risk
Researchers from the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center (RADC), part of Chicago’s Rush University System for Health, used data from five diverse studies of older adults without known dementia (n=3,822) to observe intensive care unit (ICU) hospitalizations. ICU hospitalizations were previously linked to cognitive impairment in older patients, but few studies have examined whether they increase risk for dementia.
They reviewed Medicare claims records from 1991 to 2018 (pre-pandemic), and checked annually for development of Alzheimer’s and all type dementia using a standardized cognitive assessment. During an average 7.8 years follow up, 1,991 (52%) participants experienced at least one ICU hospitalization; 1,031 (27%) had an ICU stay before study enrollment; and 961 (25%) had an ICU stay during the study period.
The researchers found that, in analyses adjusted for age, sex, education and race, experiencing ICU hospitalization was associated with 63% higher risk of Alzheimer’s dementia and 71% higher risk of all type dementia. In models further adjusted for other health factors such as vascular risk factors and disease, other chronic medical conditions, and functional disabilities, the association was even stronger: ICU hospitalization was associated with 110% greater risk of Alzheimer’s and 120% greater risk of all type dementia.
“We found that ICU hospitalization was associated with double the risk of dementia in community-based older adults,” said Bryan D. James, Ph.D., epidemiologist at RADC. “These findings could be significant given the high rate of ICU hospitalization in older persons, and especially due to the tremendous upsurge in ICU hospitalizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the link between ICU hospitalization and the development of dementia is of utmost importance now more than ever.”
“More research is necessary to replicate these findings and elucidate the factors that may increase dementia risk. For example, is it the critical illness that sends someone to the hospital or potentially modifiable procedures during the hospitalization that drives dementia risk?” James added.
One positive life change during the pandemic may buffer against cognitive symptoms
Investigators from countries across Central and South America and the United States examined whether sociodemographic factors and changes in life associated with the pandemic were related to experiencing cognitive symptoms, including problems with memory, attention and other thinking skills, during the early phases of the pandemic.
In the study reported at AAIC, 2,382 Spanish-speaking adults age 55-95 (average 65.3 years, 62.3% female) from nine countries in Latin America completed an online or telephone survey, had electronic cognitive testing, and filled out an inventory assessing the positive and negative impacts of the pandemic between May and December 2020. Of the total study population, 145 (6.09%) experienced COVID-19 symptoms.
Participants were from: Uruguay (1,423, 59.7%), Mexico (311, 13.1%), Peru (153, 6.4%), Chile (152, 6.4%), Dominican Republic (117, 4.9%), Argentina (106, 4.5%), Colombia (50, 2.1%), Ecuador (39, 1.6%), Puerto Rico (19, 0.8%) and Other (12, 0.5%)
Key findings:
- Female gender, not currently working and lower socioeconomic status were all independently associated with more cognitive symptoms during the early part of the pandemic.
- Negative life changes during the pandemic, such as economic difficulties and limited social activities, were significantly associated with more cognitive symptoms. However, this association was weaker among study participants who reported at least one positive life change during the pandemic, including spending more time with friends and family or more time outside in nature.
“Identifying risk and protective factors for cognitive symptoms during the pandemic is an important step towards the development of prevention efforts,” said María Marquine, Ph.D., associate professor in the Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry, and director of disparities research in the Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology and Palliative Care at the University of California, San Diego. “The experience of positive life changes during the pandemic might buffer the detrimental impact of negative life changes on cognitive symptoms.”
“This study is an example of how investigators from diverse countries in Latin America and the United States, many of whom had never worked together before and had limited resources, came together under difficult circumstances but with a shared goal to advance scientific understanding about Alzheimer’s, and the important contributions that such multicultural partnerships can yield,” Marquine added.
Peloton Swaps Out Finance Chief as It Navigates Persistent Losses
Peloton Interactive Inc.
is exchanging its top finance executive about four months after it named a new chief executive, a move that comes as the fitness-equipment maker navigates persistent losses.
The New York-based at-home exercise equipment company on Monday said
Liz Coddington
will serve as its chief financial officer, effective June 13. Peloton said its current CFO,
Jill Woodworth,
decided to leave after more than four years with the company.
Peloton said Ms. Woodworth will remain with the company as a consultant on an interim basis to help prepare the fiscal year 2022 financial results.
Ms. Coddington most recently served as vice president of finance for Amazon Web Services, an
Amazon.com Inc.
subsidiary that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms. Before that, she held CFO and leadership finance roles at companies including retailer
Walmart Inc.
and streaming business
Netflix Inc.
Ms. Coddington joins Peloton as the company is dealing with waning demand from consumers after facing issues around its ability to meet orders, which soared during the early stages of the pandemic. The surge in demand for Peloton bikes led the company to break ground on a million-square-foot factory in Wood County, Ohio, last year.
Peloton is now looking to sell the factory that it will never use. The company also slashed prices for its equipment, projected slower growth and had to borrow $750 million to fund its operations.
Peloton in May reported its largest quarterly loss since the company went public in 2019, reporting a net loss of $757.1 million for the quarter ended March 31, compared with a loss of $8.6 million in the prior-year period.
In February, Peloton replaced Chief Executive
John Foley
with
Barry McCarthy,
who previously led the finances of digital music service
Spotify Technology SA
and Netflix. The company also cut 2,800 jobs amid reduced demand for its exercise equipment. Mr. Foley was closely associated with the company’s growth phase after its public offering and the revenue surge early in the pandemic.
The change in the CFO-seat makes sense given the continuing restructuring under Mr. McCarthy, said
Rohit Kulkarni,
managing director at equity trading and research firm MKM Partners LLC.
“As the new CEO puts his mark on the organization’s structure and aligns it with where he wants the company to go, these changes are not completely surprising,” he said.
With Peloton’s fiscal year ending June 30, Ms. Coddington will very quickly be “under a bigger investor microscope,” as the expectation is that the company will release fiscal year guidance soon after she joins, Mr. Kulkarni said. “It will be a challenging task to provide that new guidance.”
Write to Jennifer Williams-Alvarez at jennifer.williams-alvarez@wsj.com and Mark Maurer at Mark.Maurer@wsj.com
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J.&J. Pauses Production of Its Covid Vaccine Despite Persistent Need
Johnson & Johnson’s easy-to-deliver Covid-19 shot is the vaccine of choice for much of the developing world.
Yet the American company, which has already fallen far behind on its deliveries to poorer countries, late last year quietly shut down the only plant making usable batches of the vaccine, according to people familiar with the decision.
The facility, in the Dutch city of Leiden, has instead been making an experimental but potentially more profitable vaccine to protect against an unrelated virus.
The halt is temporary — the Leiden plant is expected to start churning out the Covid vaccine again after a pause of a few months — and it is not clear whether it has had an impact on vaccine supplies yet, thanks to stockpiles.
But over the next several months, the interruption has the potential to reduce the supply of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine by a few hundred million doses, according to one of the people familiar with the decision. Other facilities have been hired to produce the vaccine but either aren’t up and running yet or haven’t received regulatory approval to send what they’re making to be bottled.
Inside Johnson & Johnson’s executive suites, the decision to suspend production at Leiden prompted concerns that it would impair the company’s ability to deliver on its vaccine commitments to the developing world.
Johnson & Johnson’s move also blindsided officials at two of the company’s most important customers: the African Union and Covax, the clearinghouse responsible for getting vaccines to poor countries. Leaders of those organizations learned of the halt in production from New York Times reporters.
“This is not the time to be switching production lines of anything, when the lives of people across the developing world hang in the balance,” said Dr. Ayoade Alakija, a co-head of the African Union’s vaccine-delivery program.
Jake Sargent, a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, said in an email that the company was “focused on ensuring our vaccine is available where people are in need” and that its global production network “is working day and night” to help fight the pandemic.
He said the company was continuing to deliver batches of the vaccine to facilities that bottled and packaged doses. He also said Johnson & Johnson had millions of finished doses in inventory.
Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine, initially billed as a single shot, fell out of favor in the United States and other wealthy countries in part because of its link to a rare but dangerous blood-clotting disorder. Studies have found that it performs worse by some measures than the shots from Pfizer and Moderna.
But poorer countries remain reliant on Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which does not require ultracold refrigeration. It has been shown to provide strong and long-lasting protection against severe disease across variants, including Omicron, when given as a two-shot regimen. As a single shot, the vaccine is less expensive and relatively easy to give to hard-to-reach populations.
“In many low- and middle-income countries, our vaccine is the most important and sometimes only option,” Dr. Penny Heaton, a Johnson & Johnson executive, said in December at a meeting of experts advising the U.S. government on vaccines. She added, “The world is depending on us.”
Lower-income countries now have more vaccine options than at any previous point in the pandemic, and the impact of pausing production at the Leiden plant is therefore less severe than it might have been in the past. Some African governments have asked vaccine manufacturers to pause shipments until the countries use what they have on hand. Companies have cited that as evidence that they are providing plenty of vaccines to poorer countries.
But the reality is more complicated.
Only about 11 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated (and few have received boosters). Many countries lack the infrastructure — medical personnel, storage facilities and transportation — to quickly inoculate their populations. They don’t need a huge pile of vaccines all at once; they need a steady and predictable supply over many months.
As recently as last summer, Johnson & Johnson had projected that it would deliver one billion doses of its Covid vaccine in 2021. The company badly missed that target, releasing roughly 400 million doses, according to a person familiar with the company’s vaccine production.
Mr. Sargent said the company was continuing to fulfill its contractual obligations to the African Union, which has ordered vaccines on behalf of dozens of countries in Africa and the Caribbean, and to Covax, which buys vaccines for scores of low-income governments.
But Johnson & Johnson failed to deliver anywhere near as many doses to Covax as it planned. The company said in May that it “aimed to supply” up to 200 million vaccine doses to Covax by the end of last year. Covax got only four million; another 151,000 arrived last month, according to Gavi, the main nonprofit that runs Covax. (Wealthy countries supplemented that with donations.)
The African Union, which ordered 220 million doses, has fared better. It has been receiving doses on or ahead of schedule, with the bulk of the order due in the next eight months.
Dr. Seth Berkley, who helps run Covax as the chief executive of Gavi, said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been at the center of the program’s strategy for fighting Covid last year. But because of Johnson & Johnson’s delay in delivering doses, Covax has increasingly looked to other vaccine providers.
“We really needed their doses in 2021, and we were counting on them,” Dr. Berkley said. “They didn’t deliver. So we had to find other doses to meet the countries’ needs.”
An African Union official said the bloc was also concerned by the decision to pause production at the Leiden plant because it had been assured that all of its vaccine would come from that facility. The official said Johnson & Johnson’s move raised doubts about whether the bloc would exercise an option to buy an additional 180 million Johnson & Johnson doses.
Johnson & Johnson has already faced criticism for failing to prioritize people in developing countries for its Covid vaccine. Last summer, the head of the World Health Organization rebuked the company after The Times reported that millions of doses that had been bottled in South Africa were being exported for distribution in Europe.
To make its Covid vaccine, Johnson & Johnson relies on a sprawling international network. In addition to the company-run Leiden facility, factories in India, Baltimore and North Carolina have been hired to make the substance of the vaccine. Others, including a plant in South Africa, handle the so-called fill-finish process of bottling and packaging doses.
From the start, Johnson & Johnson executives told U.S. officials that they planned to eventually pull the Leiden facility out of the rotation so it could make other products, according to current and former U.S. officials.
That was before Johnson & Johnson’s network was overrun with problems.
Johnson & Johnson hired a contractor, Emergent BioSolutions, to produce its vaccine at a Baltimore plant that is big enough to make the equivalent of up to a billion doses a year. Emergent, however, failed to meet federal manufacturing standards, and regulators forced the plant to suspend production last April.
The factory restarted in August, but regulators with the Food and Drug Administration have not yet determined that it can consistently operate in compliance with manufacturing standards, officials said.
The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to Know
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Mask mandates ending. In one of the biggest rollbacks of statewide health protocols since the pandemic began, officials in New Jersey and Connecticut said they would end mask mandates for schools, while California, Delaware and Oregon also announced the easing of some mask orders.
As a result, the F.D.A. has insisted on reviewing individual batches of vaccines before they are shipped to be bottled. Regulators haven’t cleared any batches made since the factory reopened, said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for Emergent.
Plans are underway for two other facilities — one a Merck plant in North Carolina, the other run by Biological E in India — to start contributing batches of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. But those plants are not yet producing usable vaccine substance and are not expected to do so until late spring.
The Merck plant — whose participation in the vaccine production the White House last year hailed as a “historic” breakthrough — was supposed to be producing batches as early as last fall. That timeline has since been pushed back to late spring, federal officials said.
The delays at Merck and Emergent increased the importance of the Leiden plant. After a renovation last year, the facility had the capacity to produce the equivalent of well over 50 million Covid vaccine doses a month, said two people familiar with the matter.
Unlike companies such as Pfizer and Moderna, which have reaped billions of dollars in profits, Johnson & Johnson did not find the Covid vaccine to be a big moneymaker.
Johnson & Johnson vowed to sell its vaccine on a not-for-profit basis. The vaccine generated about $2.4 billion in sales last year, less than 3 percent of the company’s total revenue.
Since production of the Covid vaccine was halted late last year, the Netherlands plant has been manufacturing an experimental vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., that will be used for a clinical trial in older adults in wealthy countries, a person familiar with the matter said. Even if it proves effective, the vaccine is not expected to become available for several years.
Mr. Sargent, the Johnson & Johnson spokesman, said the company’s manufacturing sites “produce multiple products, as we have an obligation to supply life-changing medicines to patients around the world.”
Johnson & Johnson is among several companies racing to develop the first vaccine for R.S.V., which kills an estimated 14,000 older adults in the United States annually.
As with other medical products, the company that wins the first approval is poised to have an advantage in capturing a big share of a market that some analysts think could be worth $10 billion annually by 2030.
The vaccine is likely to be aimed at people in wealthy countries, since adults in the developing world are rarely tested for R.S.V.
Even with the Leiden plant no longer making the Covid vaccine, Mr. Sargent said Johnson & Johnson continued to provide batches to all of the sites that were handling bottling.
One of those is Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa. Stephen Saad, Aspen’s chief executive, said the Leiden shutdown had not interrupted the supply of vaccine to Aspen’s factory.
Johnson & Johnson is preparing to return the Leiden facility to making the Covid vaccine next month.
But that won’t translate into an immediate gusher of new doses. The facility’s production will undergo testing and inspections. Doses made from the restarted Leiden production most likely won’t be shipped until May or June.
Suspected Chinese hackers hit News Corp with ‘persistent cyberattack’
Dozens of journalists at the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal were targeted in the hack, which appeared to focus on reporters and editors covering China-related issues, two people familiar with the matter told CNN.
Cybersecurity firm Mandiant (MNDT), which News Corp (NWS) hired to investigate the breach, believes the hackers are “likely involved in espionage activities to collect intelligence to benefit China’s interests,” said David Wong, vice president of consulting at Mandiant.
The intrusion, which appeared to date to at least February 2020, compromised email accounts and Google Drive documents used by certain Wall Street Journal journalists, one of the people familiar with the investigation said. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the timeline of the hack.
Journalists are frequent targets of various state-backed hackers in search of intelligence on governments and corporations. For this reason, many journalists do not mention sensitive information over email.
Wall Street Journal management held a series of briefings on Thursday with the journalists affected by the hack, the two sources familiar with the investigation said. Journal staff are going through forensic data to determine what information was taken from individual journalists, one of those people said.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he was unfamiliar with the incident. “China firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms,” Liu claimed.
FBI Director Christopher Wray this week accused China of having a “massive, sophisticated hacking program that is bigger than those of every other major nation combined.”
News Corp spokesperson James Kennedy declined to comment on how many journalists were affected or other undisclosed details of the investigation.
Kennedy instead shared an email that News Corp’s security team sent to employees on Friday that said the hack affected “a limited number of business email accounts and documents” from News Corp headquarters, as well as News Corp properties such as Dow Jones and The New York Post.
“Our highest concern is the protection of our employees, including our journalists, and their sources,” the email says, adding that investigators think the hack has been contained.
The incident did not appear to affect systems holding customer and financial data, News Corp said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Runa Sandvik, former senior director for information security at The New York Times, said the goal in defending organizations, including news networks, against advanced hackers should be limiting the systems the hackers access and the amount of time they have access to them.
“Over the years, media organizations have definitely put more focus on security within their company, including for newsrooms specifically,” Sandvik, who is a cybersecurity consultant for Radio Free Europe and other media outlets, told CNN. “I think there absolutely is room for improvement.”
News Corp said it would share information about the hack with other news organizations so they can protect themselves.
Journalists have had to contend with hacking threats for years.
Nearly a decade ago, suspected Chinese hackers infiltrated computer systems at The New York Times as journalists at the paper were concluding an investigation into the wealth of relatives of then-Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, The Times reported then.
CNN’s Alex Marquardt contributed reporting.
“Founding Father” of Lithium-Ion Batteries Helps Solve Persistent 40-Year Problem With His Invention
The “Founding Father” of lithium-ion batteries used SNS neutrons to confirm coating cathode material (blue) with lithium-free niobium oxide (light green) greatly reduced first-cycle capacity loss and improved long-term capacity. Credit: Jill Hemman/ORNL
In the late 1970s, M. Stanley Whittingham was the first to describe the concept of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, an achievement for which he would share the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Yet even he couldn’t have anticipated the complex materials science challenges that would arise as these batteries came to power the world’s portable electronics.
One persistent technical problem is that every time a new lithium-ion battery is installed in a device, up to about one-fifth of its energy capacity is lost before the device can be recharged the very first time. That’s true whether the battery is installed in a laptop, camera, wristwatch, or even in a new electric vehicle.
The cause is impurities that form on the nickel-rich cathodes—the positive (+) side of a battery through which its stored energy is discharged.
To find a way of retaining the lost capacity, Whittingham led a group of researchers that included his colleagues from the State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY Binghamton) and scientists at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Brookhaven (BNL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL). The team used x-rays and neutrons to test whether treating a leading cathode material—a layered nickel-manganese-cobalt material called NMC 811—with a lithium-free niobium oxide would lead to a longer lasting battery.
The results of the study, “What is the Role of Nb in Nickel-Rich Layered Oxide Cathodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries?” appear in ACS Energy Letters.
VULCAN is designed for deformation, phase transformation, residual stress, texture, and microstructure studies. Load frames, furnaces, battery chargers, and other auxiliary equipment for in situ and time-resolved measurements are integrated into the instrument. As a time-of-flight diffractometer at the world’s most intense pulsed, accelerator-based neutron source, VULCAN provides rapid volumetric mapping with a sampling volume of 2-600 mm3 and a measurement time of minutes for common engineering materials. In extreme cases, VULCAN has the ability to study kinetic behaviors in sub-second time frames. Credit: DOE
“We tested NMC 811 on a layered oxide cathode material after predicting the lithium-free niobium oxide would form a nanosized lithium niobium oxide coating on the surface that would conduct lithium ions and allow them to penetrate into the cathode material,” said Whittingham, now a SUNY distinguished professor and director of the Northeast Center for Chemical Energy Storage (NECCES), a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center led by SUNY Binghamton.
Lithium batteries have cathodes made of alternating layers of lithium and nickel-rich oxide materials (chemical compounds containing at least one oxygen 
SNS produces neutrons with an accelerator-based system that delivers short (microsecond) proton pulses to a steel target filled with liquid mercury through a process called spallation. Those neutrons are then directed toward state-of-the-art instruments that provide a variety of capabilities to researchers across a broad range of disciplines including physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. Credit: DOE
To understand how the niobium affects nickel-rich cathode materials, the scientists performed neutron powder diffraction studies at the VULCAN engineering materials diffractometer at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). They measured the neutron diffraction patterns of pure NMC 811 and niobium-modified samples.
“Neutrons easily penetrated the cathode material to reveal where the niobium and lithium atoms were located, which provided a better understanding of how the niobium modification process works,” said Hui Zhou, battery facility manager at NECCES. “The neutron scattering data suggests the niobium atoms stabilize the surface to reduce first-cycle loss, while at higher temperatures the niobium atoms displace some of the manganese atoms deeper inside the cathode material to improve long-term capacity retention.”
The results of the experiment showed a reduction in first-cycle capacity loss and an improved long-term capacity retention of greater than 93 percent over 250 charge-discharge cycles.
“The improvements seen in electrochemical performance and structural stability make niobium-modified NMC 811 a candidate as a cathode material for use in higher energy density applications, such as electric vehicles,” said Whittingham. “Combining a niobium coating with the substitution of niobium atoms for manganese atoms may be a better way to increase both initial capacity and long-term capacity retention. These modifications can be easily scaled-up using the present multi-step manufacturing processes for NMC materials.”
Whittingham added that the research supports the objectives of the Battery500 Consortium, a multi-institution program led by the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The program is working to develop next-generation lithium-metal battery cells delivering up to 500-watt hours per kilogram versus the current average of about 220-watt hours per kilogram.
Reference: “What is the Role of Nb in Nickel-Rich Layered Oxide Cathodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries?” by Fengxia Xin, Hui Zhou, Yanxu Zong, Mateusz Zuba, Yan Chen, Natasha A. Chernova, Jianming Bai, Ben Pei, Anshika Goel, Jatinkumar Rana, Feng Wang, Ke An, Louis F. J. Piper, Guangwen Zhou and M. Stanley Whittingham, 18 March 2021, ACS Energy Letters.
DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.1c00190
The research was supported by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office, and used resources at BNL’s National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) and at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source.
SNS and NSLS-II are DOE Office of Science user facilities. UT-Battelle LLC manages ORNL for the DOE Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.