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  • Unlikely Bedfellows

    Unlikely Bedfellows

    Photo: Dmitry

    How free-flowing data streams can help advance public health goals for nicotine products.

    By Cheryl K. Olson

    How might new technologies engage public health in transforming the tobacco sector? Let’s take a look at three unlikely scientific bedfellows: sewage, Covid-19 and smoking harm reduction.

    Of the many innovations born from the Covid-19 pandemic, my favorite is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS). Since September 2020, the NWSS has tapped into underused data streams flowing through our communities to get early warnings of local disease spread. It’s not perfect; you can’t predict how many people are sick, and it misses people not hooked up to municipal collection systems. But the information is there for the taking. It doesn’t depend on persuading people to show up and get tested. 

    The smoking harm reduction parallel? Technology innovations can also help advance public health goals for nicotine products using the less malodorous but equally free-flowing data streams of search engines and social media. This is information people have already provided, with no need to persuade them to fill out surveys or file a report. We can systematically search those streams to look for evidence of product adverse experiences or youth misuse of tobacco products or to hunt for and counteract nicotine misinformation.

    I found a guide to some of these new methods in sociologist Navin Kumar, a postdoctoral associate at the Yale School of Medicine. He uses techniques like social computing, machine learning and natural language analysis to promote health, including tobacco harm reduction.

    Countering Misinformation

    Kumar’s research group has done several studies looking at how new technologies can identify and potentially counter health misinformation. As an example of how to study web-based narratives in tobacco control, the researchers tackled two controversial areas at once by mapping how misinformation spread about vaping (especially CBD from cannabis) to help treat Covid-19. This included collecting vaping-related text fragments from a wide range of web sources, including health provider forums, news articles and blogs as well as social media. They also generated word clouds (a fun and intuitive way to depict the most-used words) to see how the use of key terms changed before and after Covid-19 was reported to the World Health Organization. The results showed a shift from words related to vaping bans to positive mentions of CBD and CBD oil.

    There are many challenges in applying these techniques to counter nicotine misinformation. For a start, we need to understand how people talk about nicotine products in online conversations as opposed to formal news reports. A study by Kumar and colleagues analyzed the framing of vaping in social media and how words used to describe vaping and their meanings shifted over time. In earlier years, “happy” and “wonderful” were among the most frequent words associated with vaping. From 2017 on, these gave way to words like “ban,” “lung” and “teen.” The study vividly illustrates (with those wonderful word clouds) the social media shift from seeing vaping as an alternative to cigarettes to viewing vaping as about harm and regulation like the news media did.

    Another problem: It turns out it’s easier to get people to buy into twaddle than to stop them from doing so. Said Kumar, “People tend to believe new misinformation; it’s harder to remove misinformation such as ‘vaccines have microchips.’” One of Kumar’s recent studies was a randomized controlled trial to try to counter tobacco product misinformation. Results were promising, but the challenge is huge. How can a metaphorical cupful of accurate information received in a study counter the buckets of misinformation people get on a daily basis?

    That’s why researchers such as Kumar are working on automated ways to detect misinformation on social media using machine learning. If responsible parties can detect the latest mutation in tobacco product misinformation as it emerges, “They could respond before it has a chance to take hold. And go to Facebook and other outlets to counteract it,” said Kumar.

    New technologies, such as social computing, machine learning and natural language analysis, may help counter online misinformation about nicotine products. (Photo: Jo Panuwat D)

    Adverse Experiences 

    The goals of reporting are to identify safety risks, to share lessons learned so our mistakes are new instead of repeats of the past and to raise the cost to potential bad actors of disregarding customer safety. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products takes voluntary reports from anyone—including product users, researchers and health professionals—about “adverse experiences.” You can report a tobacco product concern through the FDA’s central safety reporting portal at www.safetyreporting.hhs.gov, which also takes reports about marketed human and animal drugs and biologics, foods and dietary supplements.

    Traditional ways of reporting adverse experiences to the FDA leave a lot to be desired. Since the system is primarily voluntary, a busy human must find the time and motivation to report the problem. Under-reporting is assumed, but no one knows by how much or how reporting may differ by product, user or symptom type. Important details may be left out of the report, making it hard to spot patterns (or creating misleading patterns as in the case of e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury (EVALI)). Reporting can also be biased by things like news reports and litigation. The blossoming variety of reduced-harm nicotine products further complicates finding and addressing safety issues when market shares are small and issues are infrequent.

    If your company’s tobacco product gets a premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) marketing granted order from the FDA, postmarket reporting of adverse experiences is required as part of the deal. “Serious and unexpected” adverse experiences that companies are told about or discover must be reported through that FDA portal within 15 days. The FDA may also require other postmarket reporting to stay comfortable with keeping a new tobacco product on the market. It’s in your interest to avoid surprises.

    This approach is still untested for tobacco products, but publications are proliferating using these methods. I ran across articles that used machine learning and natural language processing to monitor for adverse effects of Covid-19 vaccines on Twitter and for health risks from the mood-altering plant kratom on Reddit and Twitter.

    As with our example of using wastewater to predict Covid-19 spread, Kumar notes that multiple data sources better predict outcomes. “So you can use reports on Twitter combined with YouTube and [the] news to predict adverse experiences,” he said. Look to computer science publications for the latest publications on nicotine products; they aren’t caught up in the tobacco harm reduction battles now raging in many public health journals.

    How do These Tech Innovations Look to Public Health Authorities?

    Are these promising innovations likely to percolate through into accepted practice? Will regulators look upon creative high-tech approaches with favor or scorn? To look for clues, I searched the abstracts (summaries) of studies accepted for the March 2022 meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). (SRNT is not, at present, an industry-friendly organization and, therefore, is a useful gauge of sentiment among academics and regulators.) Over two dozen studies involved using social media data for research, most simply to gather information and look for patterns. Some involved lifting data from Reddit, Twitter or Instagram about descriptions or perceptions of particular tobacco products then using conventional qualitative methods (coding by human readers) to explore topics and feelings. Others used social network analysis to understand how information about products or policies spread. 

    Two studies supported the possibility of collecting adverse experiences through social media. One coded mentions of positive and negative health outcomes from vaping found on Twitter and Reddit. Another studied videos posted to the TikTok app (with hashtag #nicsick).

    One study combined old and new methods by using an age detection algorithm with Reddit metadata to sort posted comments on vaping and then hand-reviewing the most popular posts by each age group. A nicotine product company could potentially use an age detection algorithm to show regulators that their social media accounts don’t attract youth.

    Wearable sensors were used to detect smoking behavior as part of a smartphone-delivered smoking cessation program. Behavior studies documenting the transition from smoking to vaping might benefit from including wearable technologies. We might find, for example, that people who’ve completely transitioned to vaping have better sleep quality.

    New technologies bring new potential but also novel problems. For example, social media has been hailed as a new cost-effective, efficient way to recruit subjects for research, especially hard-to-find subgroups. My research team did have some success recently using social media platforms, such as Facebook, to locate a particular “vulnerable population” for PMTA behavioral studies. However, it also attracted responses from scammers, automated survey bots and professional survey takers, which took a lot of time and creativity to block or identify and remove.

     

    Cheryl K. Olson is a California-based public health researcher who specializes in behavioral health issues and consults on tobacco product behaviors via McKinney Regulatory Science Associates. She spent 15 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.

    Forewarned is Forearmed

    Derek Yach

    One example of using these advanced techniques to find early signals of both misinformation and potential health concerns is an e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury (EVALI) monitoring and alerting platform developed by Skai (formerly Signals Analytics) for the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.

    As a proof of concept, the platform retrospectively analyzed and compared vaping-related content from social media and news sources. In social media comments about specific symptoms and vape ingredients, Skai’s platform spotted signals of the direct link between seizures and vaping synthetic CBD nearly a year before official reports appeared. This kind of early information, while not definitive, would allow public health authorities and the industry to respond quickly to prevent harm and provide corrective facts in appropriate language.

    Disinformation on social media, from naive misunderstandings to deliberate manipulations, will be a fact of life for years to come. Taking advantage of these analytical techniques allows the industry to demonstrate socially responsible leadership in advancing public health. Why be blindsided by EVALI’s inevitable successor when there are tools to detect and respond to it? –Derek Yach

    *https://skai.io/reports-and-whitepapers/early-detection-of-pandemics-and-outbreaks/?msclkid=4ac806b7a95011ecb5d22adb0bd2b48e

  • All in the Mind

    All in the Mind

    Photo: andriano_cz

    A human-centric health ecosystem could unleash tobacco harm reduction’s full potential.

    By Stefanie Rossel

    In their efforts to end the era of combustible cigarettes, governments, public health authorities and other stakeholders today have a much larger toolkit at their disposal than they did at the turn of the millennium—at least in theory because only a fraction of available strategies are currently being employed.

    Due to increasing connectivity, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has brought rapid changes to technology, industries and society. It is also transforming the healthcare system—insurance companies seeking to promote a healthy lifestyle by asking their customers to use wearable devices that record physical activity and calorie intake are just one example.

    In order to better deal with today’s complex challenges, healthcare has in recent years become more human-centric, striving to understand human needs and how design—both the process of designing and the outcome of that process—can respond to these needs. “Design” in this context refers not only to products, services and procedures but also to strategies and policies.

    A human-centric health ecosystem (HCHE) involves understanding people and their needs, engaging stakeholders throughout the design process and systematically addressing interactions between the micro-level, meso-level and macro-level of sociotechnical care systems as well as the transition of individual interests to collective interests.

    This new approach to healthcare requires a holistic systemic approach, major organizational change and well-designed, dedicated interventions, such as products, services or procedures to be used by patients, caregivers and medical professionals to facilitate and implement the system.

    The role of the patient in this system changes accordingly: Instead of being a passive recipient of medical directions, he or she becomes a well-informed, responsible patient, intrinsically motivated to actively contribute to the success of his or her treatment. In contrast to the traditional approach, he or she doesn’t simply passively comply with instructions and wait for professionals to solve their problems but makes use of a technology-enabled ecosystem with an embedded choice architecture that encourages the desirable behavior and seeks support from a variety of sources.

    This healthcare model is shifting the focus from treatment toward prevention. Centralized, capital-intensive diagnostics facilities will be aided and perhaps even replaced by individual, on-demand or continuous inexpensive and readily available technologies, such as the mentioned wearables. Sensors in these devices generate data that enable disease prevention with the help of machine learning. Diagnostic and treatment data could be collected in a global database that practitioners can access but that is owned by the patients. Finally, instead of applying homogeneous therapies across groups of patients with similar health issues, treatments are likely to become more personalized.

    Behavioral Triggers

    The novel concept also holds promise for the prevention of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), for which tobacco use is one of the greatest risk factors. The U.K.’s progressive tobacco harm reduction (THR) strategy, for example, incorporates many HCHE components. It has established a comprehensive infrastructure that includes institutions and healthcare professionals to help smokers to switch to less hazardous products or quit nicotine altogether. In 2017, the U.K. launched a Tobacco Control Plan that stresses the importance of innovation and less harmful alternatives. According to studies, the U.K.’s approach has been able to reduce smoking prevalence from around 20 percent in 2011 to between 13.8 percent and 16 percent in 2021.

    But the HCHE model offers further opportunities. Focusing on the individual and his or her perceptions, intentions and behaviors influencing personal health results, it is a demand-driven structure. Personal health outcomes, in turn, will ultimately influence population health. A fully developed HCHE environment uses a vast range of behavioral triggers that can encourage healthy decisions and eventually impact the incidence and prevalence of NCDs.

    At the 2017 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Willis Towers Watson published a white paper assessing the progress in preventing NCDs with the help of behavioral economics as part of the Human-Centric Health project. According to the white paper, mortality rates due to NCDs are projected to increase from 38 million to 62 million by 2040. While NCDs presently impact mostly high-income countries, they are growing fastest in low-income and middle-income countries.

    Participants in the Human-Centric Health project were tasked to develop and disseminate knowledge and tools for behavioral changes that would lead to long-term healthier lifestyles. The experts were also asked to identify public-private cooperation opportunities across nontraditional health and healthcare stakeholders, for which the WEF could provide a platform. The project touched upon smoking cessation but did not make use of the THR concept.

    Making Healthy Choices

    Human decision-making depends heavily on heuristics, mental shortcuts that can facilitate problem-solving in situations of limited knowledge and time. Heuristic processes are based on experience, thus enabling people to quickly make the thousands of decisions they must make every day. Not all precepts of behavioral economics, though, lead to choices that support good health. The WEF white paper reviews some of the more powerful principles in behavioral economics that may contribute to healthier behavior within the HCHE if being applied appropriately.

    “Present bias,” for example, is a strong motivator: Humans tend to assign greater value to payoffs that are closer to the present time than those that occur further in the future—if people want something, they want it immediately. A strategy for health improvement should thus present choices that combine a current pleasure with a behavior that will lead to better health in the future and emphasize the near-term advantages of healthy behavior rather than the benefits that might be achieved later. A case study described by the white paper suggested glycemic control in diabetes patients reliant on food banks could be improved by providing clients with diabetes-appropriate food, blood sugar monitoring, primary care referral and self-management support.

    Another behavioral trigger is loss aversion: People sense the pain of loss more deeply than the pleasure of gain. Recently, this insight has been used in initiatives to encourage smoking cessation: Smokers received a payment at the outset of the program, which they would be forced to pay back if they failed to keep their commitment to quit smoking.

    Health choices can also be influenced by framing—by expressing the consequences of disease in survival rates rather than mortality rates, for example—even if the results are equal. The HCHE system may emphasize benefits that can be achieved through a specific action or the ease of healthy behavior compared with other activities people voluntarily decide on.

    The HCHE system also takes advantage of the knowledge that humans respond better to narratives than logic or statistics. By telling compelling stories that people can relate to, health practitioners can drive healthier behaviors. Of course, facts must be given accurately, but data alone don’t necessarily drive change.

    Humans are also subject to social norms—a person married to or friendly with smokers is more likely to smoke than a person without such relationships, according to the white paper. Findings like this, however, can also be used to achieve a positive effect—for example, by incorporating social media and influencers into information campaigns or asking people to make public commitments to future change.

    Choice architecture and defaults can nudge people toward healthier decisions. In a realm of choices, humans tend to stay with a default as it takes less energy than making an active decision and allows them to focus on more important concerns. A prominent display of healthy food in shops, for example, can thus help people make healthier choices.

    Humans’ tendency toward “irrational optimism” and “depletion” are additional behavioral triggers that can be taken advantage of to stimulate desirable behaviors. Including a lottery element in health incentives will generate attention at low cost. As people only have a limited span of attention, health improvement efforts should focus on measures with the most potential benefit while requiring the least cognitive effort of the targeted population.

    Stakeholders

    A successful HCHE, the white paper argues, resembles a consumer purchase model in which informed buyers express demands that support their well-being and stakeholders succeed by recognizing and meeting those demands. The paper identifies three actors that can greatly impact NCDs—insurers, retailers and technology.

    Insurers can contribute to the HCHE by providing health assistance, for instance, through health coaching, paying healthcare claims and providing incentives, such as rewards to encourage smoking cessation. They can also provide information about achieving and maintaining health, including health risk assessments, biometric screening and education.

    Next to increasing their inventories of healthy items, retailers, who act as a principal source of consumer products and therefore exercise particularly powerful influence over dietary quality, can provide access to selected health services, such as vaccinations on-site, and work with policymakers to develop pricing policies that encourage consumption of healthier foods and beverages. In the case of tobacco, the white paper recommends a reduced inventory, citing the example of CVS Caremark, a U.S. retailer that in 2014 stopped selling cigarettes.

    While CVS Caremark’s sales declined during the following year, its decision reduced total cigarette sales by 1 percent across 13 U.S. states while nicotine patch purchases increased by 4 percent immediately after tobacco sales ended.

    Health-related technology, the third component mentioned in the report, refers to the application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures and systems developed to solve or prevent a health problem and improve the quality of lives.

    For patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma, for instance, tracking usage of inhalers that provide vital medication can be challenging. An estimated 70 percent to 90 percent of patients use their inhalers improperly, thus delivering insufficient levels of medication to their lungs. In late 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first digital inhaler with built-in sensors that detect when the inhaler is used and measure breathing. The sensors connect to a smartphone app, recording data that can be shared with doctors who can evaluate a patient’s inhaler usage. There are many ways that these technologies could be adapted for e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn devices and related products.

    The technology sector is also where reduced-risk tobacco products (RRPs) come into play as the gap between recreational and therapeutic inhalers is narrowing. Among recently published patents for nicotine vapor devices and heated-tobacco products, most cover therapeutic innovations, including vaping products that employ sensors (see “In the Pipeline,” page 20).

    The combination of new technologies and behavioral economics allow for healthy choices to be the easier choices. Laws that regulate products proportionate to their risk compliment and support this.

    Properly integrated into the HCHE, RRPs could drive tremendous progress in public health. The private sector has already realized the potential of RRPs as a smoking cessation tool. It is time for regulators to follow their example.

     

    Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.
  • From Coercion to Empowerment

    From Coercion to Empowerment

    David Sweanor

    Tobacco harm reduction advocate David Sweanor describes the shift required to reduce the health toll of smoking.

    By Derek Yach

    David Sweanor has played a global role in steering the World Health Organization, governments and nongovernmental organizations to use the most powerful interventions they have to end smoking. His focus on policy measures to reduce the carnage from cigarette smoking, including a leading role on excise taxes, marketing restrictions and smoke-free policies, has long included tobacco harm reduction (THR). And in the process, Sweanor has highlighted the need to move from blunt approaches to all tobacco products to a system that regulates products proportionate to their risk. In a recent conversation, Sweanor discussed the origins of innovation in THR.

    “Hobbyists” and consumers seeking safer products have long tried to develop products that deliver nicotine without other toxic ingredients common in combustible cigarettes (see “Major Milestones”). Our conversation focused on transformation underway in leading tobacco companies.

    Sweanor believes that leading tobacco companies have a clear vision of the endgame for their transformation—addressing health, wellness and consumer needs profitably. This was largely forced upon them by advancements in technology, upstart competitors and consumer demand. In contrast, leaders in tobacco control, he believes, are trapped in a vision set in the 1970s that relies on coercion rather than empathy and empowerment and ignores the role of disruptive technologies.

    Sweanor laid out progress reported in the latest round of quarterly earnings by leading tobacco companies. Analysts highlighted the role of reduced-risk products as increasingly driving corporate profitability. Philip Morris International now gets 30 percent of total revenue from reduced-risk products and BAT gets 12 percent, with Altria and Imperial advancing through single digits. And Sweanor stressed the fundamental role that competition and investments in innovative research have played in driving this progress.

    The funding, volume, quality and diversity of industry research have accelerated over the past decade, and the nicotine business has attracted new and innovative players. Industry research is more interdisciplinary than most public-funded research and includes cutting-edge insights from toxicology, systems biology, epidemiology and pharmacology enhanced by clinical insights from respiratory medicine, oncology and cardiovascular disease.

    Sweanor is concerned that at a time when we need more engagement between industry and public health researchers, more barriers are being created that discourage debate, counterproductively protect the cigarette trade and prolong the epidemic of diseases and deaths caused by cigarette smoking. The Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco’s ban on tobacco industry participation in its conferences is only the latest example of industry exclusion.

    To demonstrate that they have truly embraced transformation, says Sweanor, tobacco companies and other players in the consumer nicotine market should:

    • push ahead with investments and the launch of healthier, safer products designed to end combustible use;
    • be more proactive in challenging misinformation and the laws that protect the cigarette business from competition;
    • share patents addressing core aspects of health and safety with smaller companies and state monopolies in low-income and middle-income countries—this could be done in many ways within World Trade Organization rules; and
    • place key data of public health policy relevance in the public domain. This includes, for example, conversion rates from combustibles to reduced-risk products and consumer research on the viability of reduced-risk alternatives to cigarettes. Sweanor stressed that all companies need to do this. Much could be learned from a related effort undertaken by food companies in the United States led by the Healthy Weight Foundation.

    Above all, he believes that this is the time for companies to work with governments to more aggressively end the sale of combustibles. “They should not await permission from unyielding anti-tobacco groups before fully engaging in efforts to protect the health of their consumers,” said Sweanor.

    Sweanor discussed the emergence of industry initiatives that build on their investments to end combustibles (see “In the Pipeline”). From Covid-19 vaccines derived from tobacco plants (see “The Virtuous Weed”) to deeper insights into medication aerosolization and what this might mean for new classes of pharmaceuticals delivered through 21st century delivery systems, Sweanor stated that it is clear that companies are not stopping their transformation journey. “There are no examples from across other sectors that when such profoundly disruptive change happens, it ever returns to the status quo,” he said. “The arrow of innovation points toward healthier and more environmentally sustainable products and services.”

    In time, the recent analyst views that some tobacco companies will become life sciences companies tackling major health issues may well come true!

    Derek Yach has been a global health expert and anti-smoking advocate for more than 30 years. Throughout his career, he has supported and led smoking cessation research and policy development and has been a strong proponent of harm reduction policies,

    Previously, Yach was the director of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, and a World Health Organization cabinet director and executive director for noncommunicable diseases and mental health. He was deeply involved with the development of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
  • Gene Tree Recognized for Vaping Technology

    Gene Tree Recognized for Vaping Technology

    Photo ICCPP

    ICCPP’s Gene Tree nano-microcrystalline ceramic vaporizer core won China CE Magazine’s Pioneer Technology Award 2021.

    Launched in September 2021, Gene Tree is the first “0 powder definition” ceramic core in the vapor industry. The manufacturing process is designed to eliminate dust and thus avoids the harm caused by powder falling of ordinary ceramic cores.

    The high-void porous structure of the Gene Tree core, combined with the application of food-grade lipophilic rare earth oxide, gives it excellent e-juice “guiding and locking” ability. It not only enhances stability and prolongs the product’s lifespan, but also prevents leakage, dry burns and explosions while optimizing flavor.

    According to ICCPP, the product’s self-developed heating slurry is more consistent with the thermodynamic properties of porous ceramics, greatly reducing the phenomenon of core slurry. Even after 4,000 tests of dry burning at 2.5 watts, the heating film and resistance value remained intact. The service life of dry burning at 6 watts is up to five times that of other products.

    China CE Magazine is an influential publication in China’s electronic consumer goods industry.

  • Michele Mital to lead FDA CTP

    Michele Mital to lead FDA CTP

    Illustration: Skypixel | Dreamstime.com

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) will name Michele Mital, the current deputy director of the CTP, as acting director when Mitch Zeller retires in April, reports Vaping360.

    The news was first reported Wednesday afternoon in a tweet by FDA Tracker and confirmed by Filter reporter Alex Norcia after speaking with FDA sources. No formal announcement has been made.

    Mital joined the FDA in 1996 and has held various positions in the agency, including in the Office of Legislation. Since the CTP was formed in 2009, Mital has worked there in various capacities. She was named deputy director in 2018.

    The FDA is still looking for a permanent director.

  • Armenian Counterfeiters Arrested in France

    Armenian Counterfeiters Arrested in France

    Photo: Europol

    Authorities dismantled an Armenian criminal gang in France, detaining 11 individuals and seizing more than 2.5 tons of counterfeit cigarettes, along with €100,000 ($111,689) in cash and €150,000 in winning lottery tickets, according to Europol. Four guns and various types of ammunition were also confiscated.

    The investigation was completed by French Customs with support of Europol’s European Financial and Economic Crime Centre and the French National Police. They simultaneously searched 13 sites in and around Lyon, France.

    The seized cigarettes were imported from different European countries before being stored in warehouses and then sold on the black market in multiple French cities.

  • WHO To Review Policies After Denying Vaccine

    WHO To Review Policies After Denying Vaccine

    Photo: Tom

    The World Health Organization is reviewing its policies after the global health body denied Medicago’s Covifenz Covid-19 vaccine emergency-use approval, according to The Times Colonist.

    The WHO denied the vaccine due to the company’s ties with the tobacco industry; Philip Morris is a minority stakeholder in Medicago.

    “Medicago was informed of this decision and has been apprised of WHO’s policies on tobacco,” the WHO stated.

    However, the WHO’s policies may change as the organization reevaluates its policies following the tobacco industry’s attempts to diversify into other categories.

    “WHO is currently holding discussions on how to address a general trend of the tobacco industry investing in the health industry,” the WHO said.

    Once the WHO makes a decision on its policies, the Medicago vaccine application could be reviewed.

    Medicago is waiting on a response from the WHO detailing why the vaccine application was denied. “Once we receive this, we will review the rationale and continue to discuss next steps with our partners and shareholders,” said Takashi Nagao, Medicago’s president.

  • Bottleneck Broken in Cultivated Meat

    Bottleneck Broken in Cultivated Meat

    Photo: BioBetter

    BioBetter, an Israeli biotech firm, is using tobacco plants to significantly reduce the cost of cultivated meat and advance it rapidly to scale-up.

    As numerous cultivated meat start-ups move beyond the proof-of-concept phase, they run against one of the biggest challenges facing this budding industry. Developing a scalable and cost-effective production platform to make cultured meat affordable for the mass market has proven to be a primary stumbling block.

    Cell-derived meat requires a culture medium composed of a mix of amino acids, nutrients, and—most importantly—growth factors (GF’s) without which cells cannot multiply. Currently, such media are costly due to the complexity of producing GF’s. For example, insulin and transferrin GFs are collected from livestock, making it difficult to obtain large quantities. Some can be attained via fermentation of yeast or bacteria, but those methods require expensive facilities. The purification process also is complicated and expensive.

    “The Good Food Institutes determined that approximately a 100-fold reduction in insulin and transferrin costs is required to make cultivated meat economically viable,” explains Dana Yarden, co-founder of BioBetter, in a press note. “It is estimated that growth factors and cell-culture media can constitute 55 to 95% of the marginal cost in manufacturing cell-based foods.”

    BioBetter harnessed the inherent advantages of tobacco plants by turning them into bioreactors for expression and large-scale production of the proteins. Plant bioreactors use renewable energy (sunlight) and fixate CO2. They are self-forming, self-sustaining, and biodegradable. BioBetter uses open-field plantations to enable fast, efficient, and flexible response to market needs.

    “There are multiple advantages to using Nicotiana tabacum as a hardy vector for producing GFs of non-animal origin,” says Amit Yaari of BioBetter. “It is an abundant crop that has no place in the food-and-feed chain due to its extremely bitter taste and content of undesirable alkaloids. The global trend for reducing tobacco smoking also is raising concerns among tobacco growers that the crop might eventually become obsolete. Yet the tobacco plant has huge potential to become a key component in the future of food.” Tobacco plants can achieve up to four growth cycles annually and be harvested all year. This translates to more voluminous outputs per square meter of growing space.

    BioBetter says its uniqueness lies in refining and highlighting the advantages of the tobacco plant platform for production on a huge scale. The start-up applies a proprietary protein extraction and purification technology that enables it to exploit nearly the entire plant, and at the same time deliver a high purity product at broad scale production. The company currently sources tobacco plants from local growers but the goal is to eventually source the raw material from tobacco growers globally. Based on cultivation in open fields and BioBetter’s proprietary purification technology, the cost of growth factors production is dramatically reduced, bringing cost efficiency to cultured meat production.

  • Walmart to Limit Tobacco Sales

    Walmart to Limit Tobacco Sales

    Photo: Sundry Photography

    Walmart will stop selling cigarettes in select stores across the U.S., reports AP.

    Cigarettes will be removed from some stores in California, Florida, Arkansas and New Mexico; however, Walmart did not make it clear how many of its stores will remove tobacco entirely.

    In place of cigarettes, the chain has added more self-checkout registers and items like candy and grab-and-go foods in some of these stores.

    Decisions on removing cigarettes will be made on a store-by-store basis according to the business and particular market, Walmart said. “We are always looking at ways to meet our customers’ needs while still operating an efficient business.”

  • SWM and Neenah Paper Agree to Merge

    SWM and Neenah Paper Agree to Merge

    Photo: Mikael Damkier

    Neenah Paper and Schweitzer-Mauduit International (SWM) have agreed to merge, creating a specialty materials company with a combined $3 billion in sales. The new company does not have a name yet.

    The combined company would be headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, USA. Neenah President and CEO Julie Schertell will lead the new company while SWM CEO Jeff Kramer will take a role as a strategic advisor. Five SWM board members and four Neenah board members will make up the combined company’s board of directors.

    The two companies expect to trim at least $65 million from their operating costs over the next two to three years. It will do so through production synergies and “highly complementary technologies, geographies and product portfolios in specialty materials,” the companies said in a news release. The new company would have strong market share in growing categories like healthcare and wellness, protective and adhesive solutions, industrial solutions, packaging paper and specialty paper.

    “This merger is an exciting next step on our journey and one that will deliver significant shareholder value,” said Kramer. “The combination with Neenah is a continuation of our strategic intent to solve our customers’ most complex design challenges. We are excited by the numerous benefits of this merger, including the significantly broadened customer base, product lines and technical expertise.”

    “This combination is a unique opportunity to accelerate our growth strategy and continue the transformation of our business, creating a global leader in specialty materials with strong and defensible positions in attractive end markets,” said Schertell. “Merging our two companies enhances our ability to grow and solve the needs of our customers for demanding, innovative products that address global challenges, such as the necessity for clean water and air, sustainable alternatives, and enhanced health and wellness.”

    The deal has been approved by both companies’ boards but still must be approved by shareholders for both companies and regulators.

    Neenah was founded in 1873. It was acquired by Kimberly-Clark in 1902 and operated until Kimberly-Clark spun off its regular paper-making operations under the Neenah name in 2004. Schweitzer-Mauduit is also a former division of Kimberly-Clark that was spun off as an independent company in 2015.