TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: Developed by Eli Lilly and Co’s (LLY.N) Loxo Oncology and marketed by German drugmaker Bayer (BAYGn.DE), it fights a rare genetic mutation that appears in less than 1% of solid tumors, regardless of where they appear in the body. Finding those patients will require widespread adoption of sophisticated tests that look for multiple genetic alterations that could be driving the cancer. So far, progress has been slow. Adoption of so-called next-generation sequencing (NGS) tests has been stalled by lack of reimbursement from insurers over concerns that the evidence is not there yet to support widescale use, according to more than a dozen interviews with oncologists and pharmaceutical and diagnostic industry executives. As a result, pharma companies from small biotech Blueprint Medicines Corp (BPMC.O) to larger rivals Lilly and Roche Holding AG (ROG.S) are taking matters into their own hands, bulking up staff to increase patient and physician awareness about testing and building up a gene testing infrastructure that for many community hospitals still does not exist. Bayer executives told Reuters it plans to spend $70 million to increase patient and physician awareness of testing for rare mutations and to encourage regulatory approval of more tests. They expect that budget to expand as Vitrakvi continues to win approval in other countries. Lilly told Reuters the company has signed an agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO.N) to develop a companion diagnostic test for its experimental drug, LOXO-292. The deal adds RET mutations - the target of both Lilly’s and Blueprint’s drugs - to Thermo’s Oncomine Dx Target Test, which local pathology labs can use to identify multiple genes linked with non-small cell lung cancer. The agreement is aimed to help identify more lung and thyroid cancer patients who may benefit from the Lilly or Blueprint therapies. The Thermo test is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration - a key standard for Medicare coverage, the companies said. According to Dr. Brian Alexander, chief medical officer of Roche’s gene testing company Foundation Medicine, only about 15% of U.S. patients with advanced cancers get comprehensive genomic  profiling. Another 25% get single-gene testing, he said, and a large proportion “are not getting any testing at all.”  At MD Anderson, which sees 100,000 new cancer patients a year, only around 10,000 eventually have their tumors sequenced. For a rare few, the tests are lifesaving. Xin Zheng, 47, a mother of three in Michigan who was referred to Reuters by Blueprint, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in 2016. After failing several treatments, she was out of options. Her husband, Zhigang Wei, asked for genetic sequencing, and the test turned up a RET mutation. After contacting multiple lung cancer experts, Zhigang found an early-stage clinical trial treating patients with Blueprint’s experimental drug, BLU-677. Now, Xin is nearly back to normal. “My wife is lucky,” he said, adding her quality of life is much better and she has hope for the future. Finding patients with such rare mutations is like “looking for the needle in the haystack,” said Stefan Oelrich, head of pharmaceuticals at Bayer. Dr. David Hyman of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who tested Vitrakvi in clinical trials, said making these tests the norm for advanced cancer patients will require a huge shift in the way oncology is practiced. “It’s painful to know there are patients out there with these alterations who are dying without knowing about it and without getting any treatments,” he said. For Bayer’s Vitrakvi and Roche’s Rozlytrek, along with similar drugs in development, genomic testing is critical to finding patients who can benefit from them. Cancer patients and drug companies alike got a boost last year when the federal Medicare health program for the elderly and disabled said it would cover FDA-approved tests for advanced cancer patients that can identify hundreds of genetic mutations at once. A Medicare endorsement is generally followed by widespread coverage decisions by private insurers. But the final regulations dropped a requirement that testmakers prove the tests are cost-effective and improve patient care. That created an “evidence gap” that has allowed some insurers, also known as third-party payers, to withhold coverage or demand more proof that they benefit patients, said Jeff Schreier of Diaceutics PLC (DXRX.L), a data analytics company that works with drugmakers to improve diagnostic testing. “More payers are coming around, but it’s slow,” he said. The most recent coverage policy from CVS Health Corp’s (CVS.N) Aetna approves many single-gene tests for specific cancers, but still largely considers multi-gene tests experimental. Anthem Inc’s (ANTM.N) policy limits testing to “medically necessary” use and states there’s “insufficient published evidence” to support widespread testing. And while Foundation Medicine’s and Thermo Fisher’s tests are getting reimbursed from Medicare, many hospitals such as MD Anderson, which have developed their own tests, are not guaranteed payment. “Reimbursement is still a driving force,” MD Anderson’s Kenna Shaw said of genomic testing, which costs an average of $5,000 per patient globally. Lilly bought Loxo in January for $8 billion to profit from its targeted drugs in early-stage development. Bayer secured the rights to Loxo’s two leading compounds in a 2017 alliance. Dr. Anthony Sireci, Loxo’s senior medical director, said the company has been working to “democratize” testing in the United States by increasing its use in local pathology labs, where most cancer testing has traditionally been done. The Thermo Fisher agreement will support those goals and expand patients’ access to “high-quality genomic testing,” he said. Bayer has hired diagnostic experts to help its medical and sales staff assess the barriers to genomic testing and ensure that local pathology labs are including the genetic alterations targeted by its drugs when they profile tumors, the company’s oncology strategic business chief Robert LaCaze said in an interview. Bayer also launched a public awareness campaign called “Test Your Cancer” that urges patients to ask their doctors about genomic cancer testing. The company is working with testing providers to ensure test reports are easy to understand. Blueprint, which has six genomically-targeted drugs in development, told Reuters it plans to hire six diagnostics experts to increase awareness of the mutations their drugs target, especially in community medical practices, where 70% of cancers are treated. Bayer sees signs of progress. Based on internal data, the company estimates average sequencing rates across tumors neared 30% last year, and the company saw a two-fold increase in the number of labs offering tests that carry the mutation targeted by Vitrakvi. Bayer has not released sales figures for Vitrakvi. Asked for an update in the most recent earnings call in July, Bayer’s Oelrich said uptake is going “according to plan,” but declined to say how many patients are using the drug. LaCaze said with very rare cancers like the ones Vitrakvi targets, sales growth is “something that will build over time.”

SOLUTION: Inside drugmakers' strategy to boost cancer medicines with 'Lazarus effect'.

PROBLEM: More than 132,000 cases of the virus have been reported in 123 countries since it emerged in December in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual news conference. “Europe has now become the epicenter of the pandemic with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of world combined apart from China,” he said in Geneva. Tedros announced that the WHO was launching a coronavirus Solidarity Response Fund. This would to allow people and organizations to contribute to help fund masks, gloves, gowns and goggles for heath workers, as well as diagnostic kits and investment in research and development, including for vaccines. Facebook will match up to $10 million in donations, while Alphabet Inc’s Google will donate $5 million, the WHO and UN Foundation later announced in a joint statement. Social distancing, where people avoid close proximity or touching, is a “tried and tested method” to slow the spread of a virus but “not a panacea” that will stop transmission, the WHO’s top emergency expert Dr. Mike Ryan said. Each country must decide on its own measures to protect its population, he said, adding: “But we’ve also consistently said that blanket travel measures in their own right will do nothing to protect an individual state.”  Detection and isolation of infected people, as well as tracing their contacts and wider testing, must be part of a comprehensive strategy, Ryan said. “As part of an overall comprehensive strategy, there is a place - particularly inside national borders - for potentially restricting movement between zones, as we’ve seen in certain places,” he said. “But there is rarely a justification for blanket bans, unless of course the context and the risk defines that.”  U.S. President Donald Trump has announced sweeping travel restrictions to prevent people from 26 European countries - except for Britain and Ireland - from traveling to the United States in a bid to limit the virus spread. A number of other countries in recent days have announced stepped up border checks, and canceled flights to other countries, in an effort to contain the spread. Trump on Friday declared a national emergency over the fast-spreading coronavirus, opening the door to providing what he said was about $50 billion in federal aid to fight the disease.

SOLUTION: Europe is epicenter of coronavirus pandemic: WHO.

PROBLEM: The flight contained 2.5 million surgical masks, 10 million gloves as well as goggles and thermometers worth more than 3 million Swiss francs ($3.1 million), and made by Sinopharm Group Co Ltd.  Another delivery arrived in Zurich on Sunday evening on a chartered Swiss airline flight from Shanghai carrying protective gowns for dozens of health care facilities. Further flights with additional equipment are planned. Christophe Weber, president of the Swiss-Chinese Chamber of Commerce for western Switzerland, who helped organise the Geneva delivery, said that the order was placed in response to appeals from doctors and pharmacists amid serious supply shortages. “I always considered that we, Switzerland, had the quotas necessary for protective medical equipment and it was unfortunately not the case and it became urgent to take action,” he said at Geneva’s Cointrin airport. About a dozen police surrounded the cargo. The equipment was inspected inside an airport warehouse and will be moved to another secret location for redistribution, with police escorts, later on Monday. Weber said the government knew about the delivery and had approved of it. “The competition is extremely lively with the Americans now joining in the bidding and we know about their firepower,” said Vincent Subilia, director general of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, who was also involved with the shipment, referring to masks as “blue gold”. A German official last week said that an order of 200,000 masks bound for Germany had been “confiscated” in Bangkok and diverted to the United States, calling it an “act of modern piracy”. The United States had no knowledge of the shipment, a spokesman said. Switzerland reported 21,652 positive COVID-19 cases on Monday and 584 deaths, with the rate of new confirmed increases slowing. It has mobilised the army to help back up hospitals. Medical aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres is helping in the University Hospital of Geneva, which is one of the facilities due to receive equipment. It was not immediately clear if the additional supplies would fill the gap in Switzerland’s supplies. Daniel Koch, the federal government’s point man for battling the epidemic, said on Swiss television RTS on Sunday: “There are stocks for hospitals, for professionals, for retirement homes, and the distribution system is working.”  ($1 = 0.9790 Swiss francs)

SOLUTION:
Chinese masks, or 'blue gold', arrive for Swiss hospitals.