Cancer Detection Innovation Could Change Way We Treat

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. Well. Cancer is, according to the World Health Organization, one of the leading causes of deaths around the world. It accounts for nearly ten million deaths a year that was as of so early detection is certainly key, and last year Providence became the first health system to bring in the cancer screening test Gullery.

This is a blood test that can provide early detection of cancers. To talk more about this, we've got Aura Gordon joining us, Regional medical director for Providence Center for Unical Genetics and Genomics, joining us from Burbank, California. Dr Gordon, How are you good afternoon. I'm wonderful. Thank you. Well, it's good to have you with us. I gotta tell you, before researching this, I'd never heard of the Gallery test.

Can you tell us what it is and how we can learn more about potentially life altering diseases as a result of it. Absolutely. So. The Gallery test is based on something called self free DNA and it's a blood test if you think about COVID or the way we test for other infections that we just long been able to sequence to figure out what the genetic information is

for something that's born in our body. So this first entered into clinical use about ten years ago with the ability to detect DNA from a baby when a woman was pregnant to see whether or not the baby had problems like chromosome abnormalities, down syndrome, those sorts of things. Well, what had happened was and that has taken off and is now current standard of care, the non invasive way to text detect, you know, prenatal assessment of baby's health.

But in a few rare cases, there was DNA taken from the blood test and the mother that was neither the babies nor the moms And what turned out was that that was DNA from a cancer and those were mutated DNA strands, And this became the beginning of this, you know, extraordinary journey too for what is the holy grail of trying to detect cancer without any symptoms or signs. So yeah, jump on, you had a question. Yeah, so this is this is still very early stages. Walk us

to the timeline here of how we're still progressing. Absolutely, So there's been a lot there's been a lot of R and D, and AI has gone into studies. But say, okay, fine, we found this signal now and I'm not part of the company. I'm part of a clinical study that is really looking at the utility of a test like this. So the test can the text not only is their cancer present, but then be able to differentiate fifty different types of cancer within this one blood test, anything from

colon to pancreas, to ovary or to blood cancer. So this is transformative potentially. Now what we need to know is can we actually bend the curve? Can we find cancer earlier when it is curable and not you know, the devastating late stage disease that we hear about all the time in the news, and how does this change from an economic standpoint in terms of the care for

our patients and the ability to save lives. We'll talk about early detection here because you mentioned a few cancers that I think to a lot of our audience would be recognized as essentially having really low rates of survival.

Pancreatic cancer, for example, some blood cancers that tend to kill when you're diagnosed with them, right, so you know, when you think about cancer and you think about screening in our in the US, for example, there are five cancers that we have guidelines based recommendations for breast, colon, cervical if you've been a smokers, and lung cancer, and then there's dialogue around you know, who should have prostate cancer screening. Sevent of all cancers, though, are not part

of any of those that we can screen for. So we have tried in earnest to try to figure out how do you detect cancers that people may be harboring or at risk for. I'm a medical geneticist and internet and so I my entire career is devoted to identifying those patients who are high risk and doing everything I

can for prevention and early detection. That's why I was so invested, and that's why providence of a health system so it's committed to early delivery of a test like this to be able to say who is the most important patients that need this kind of test. How do we help broaden the ability to detect cancer and those who may be at elevator risk because they have a family history, as they carry a genetic mutation, because they've had prior history of cancer, And how do we take

care of them differently? Yeah, we got about thirty seconds here. Why do you answer that? How do we how do we move forward? So what we're doing is a five thousand person study. People are in various different groups depending on whether they have a genetic risk, whether they have

a personal history that puts them at higher risk. And we're doing offering them at no charge blood test, this gallery test, with the return of results, and then following them forward saying what happens when that test is positive? How do we screen them going forward? Do we find cancers that we expected? Can we find them earlier stage, can we change the course of their disease? And all?

This is part of a national outcome study called Reflection and we are, you know, significantly contributing that to try to figure out if this is going to be the next thing that we start offering everybody on an annual basis once we have a kind of outcome data that we need to really understand who it's best for and

how to use. Dr Or Gordon, Regional medical director at Providence Center for Clinical Genetics and Genomics, joining us from Burbank, California, talking all about the new gallery tests that they've been doing for about a year. Dr Gordon, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciated. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, last week we heard from

x on Mobile Chevron. They posted their highest ever profits, reaping the rewards from surging commodity prices amidst supply disruptions and rising demand. The earnings bananza continues this afternoon after the market closes. We're set to hear from Occidental Petroleum Corporation and to give us an idea of how we should be thinking about all of these companies. And of course, the price of oil supply and demanded more is Stuart Glickman, head of Energy research at cfr A Research. He joins

us on the phone from New Jersey. Stewart, how are you this afternoon. I'm well, Tim, Thanks for having me well, it's really good to have you with us. Um. I wanted to just get your take before we get to Occidental, before we talk about last week's results at x ON and Chevron, I want to get your take on where we are when it comes to the energy transition right now.

And when I talk transition, I'm of course talking about the movement away from fossil fuels and the movement towards renewables, because I think, like a lot of people, I thought we were further along in that transition than we are. Because that's coming to a sharp relief over this last year. Yeah, Tim, it really has, and I think part of it is

arguably wishful thinking on the part of renewables advocates. The basic problem Um that renewables are having and filling the gap completely for any fossil feels he'd like to substitute away from is the problem of intermittency, and so because the sun doesn't always shine, the wind isn't always blowing. Um it's it's difficult to replace fully and have reliability.

That's something that Europe I discovered, uh, you know, late last year earlier this year with the wind not being quite as strong as they had expected, and because of what's going on with Russia of course, UM and the fact that they've moved away from coal in some cases closed nuclear plants. UH, they've been worst to turn back to uh natural gas power more than they had anticipated.

I think, certainly, I think the writings on the wall that eventually we're going to have a bigger transition towards renewables, but I think we're probably looking towards more like end of this decade and not in the next year or two. Well, let's bring it back then to the OPEC story, because we have OPEC coming up. Last time around, they said that we are going to actually perhaps increase some of

that production. But I mean, there's so much focused right now being put on that spare capacity or lack there of at this point, how much of a difference can OPEC really make right crazy? So I think there's two issues. One is do they have the ability to really ramp up production um if they wanted? And then the second is the willingness and I think that kind of fall

short on on both accounts. UM, spare capacity is tight. Uh. Really, when we're talking about spirit capacity, we're really talking about two major players, uh, Saudi Arabia of course, and then you a well the lion share of that UM. And with with Russia having more difficulty in finding buyers because of what's going on with Ukraine. UM, there's no way for Saudi Arabia and you A fully replaced everything that's

that Russia is losing. UM. But then secondly on the willingness side, UM, you know the OPEC participants when they meet, they're going to be uh concerned along with with you know, institutional investors as to whether or not UM we're about to tip into recession. UM. The factory data hasn't been all that stellar lately, and there is a fear that you know, high oil prices might be inducing a recession. In that case, you know, oil demand could fall apart

along with GDP. And speaking of when you're talking about okay, well, if the Saudi Arabia and the u A you can't make up that spirit capacity, Well, there's an entire country producers that are waiting to do that which brings me to the U S profit picture. We do have a lot of these big oil names, I mean x On Chevron recently reporting these massive profits once again. How long does that last? That's a great question, Critty. I think that the spending discipline that the US oil community has had,

uh quite honestly was was bought. Was brought into place um with a strong push from the institutional investors, because the you know, a decade ago, the story in the oil community was all about growth. Everyone was talking about how much they could be growing production through the drill bit and that story began to wane in late and

really fell apart a couple of years later. And at that point institutional investors said, listen, stop telling us about your growth plans and start telling us about how much cash flow you're going to generate, what kind of cost efficiencies you're going to um be able to obtain, and let's talk about income um you know, in the in the form of either dividends or buybacks. And that story has really remained strong even as oil prices have crested

over a hundred bucks of barrel. So if you're in the oil company, you have to play Kate a whole bunch of diff front stakeholders. You've got um right politicians, of course, you've got institutional investors, and you have the renewable community. So it's it's a very very tight tight RELI Walking Stewart. I cannot believe we're out of time. We didn't even get a chance to dig into your research and on occidental So you've got to come back

and join us once again soon. Stuart Clickman, head of Energy Research at c f A A Research, Joining us on the phone from New Jersey. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg. Quick takes Tim Stinovic

on Bloomberg Radio. Let's check back in on what's happening in Taiwan geopolitics front Center, after how speaker Nancy Pelosi landing there, becoming the highest ranking American official to visit the island in twenty five years, China saying that it will conduct missile tests and military drills around the island. Joining us now is my colleague from Bloomberg. Quick takes Scarlet Foo. She's with us right now in the Bloomberg

Interactive Broker's studio. Scarlet Um eager to have you on you know you lived and worked in Hong Kong for eight years, but you've also got a bit of a purse personal history in the region. So before we get into talking about Taiwan, I want to hear more about your story. Yeah. I used to visit Taiwan regularly. I would go every other summer because my grandparents lived there.

My parents grew up in Taiwan. They were born in China, but they fled to Taiwan with the Nationalist government, grew up in Taiwan, and we would go back and visit family regularly. So I really was able to see Taiwan evolved and developed from a society that lived under martial law to a society that was holding free elections. We'll make of the transition for us from what you understand about Taiwan and your experience there and why it's become

so important in geopolitics today. After all, it's a tiny piece of land. Yeah, you and I were talking about how geographically the main island of Taiwan is approximately the size of what I like to call Red Sox Nation, which is Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. But Taiwan also claims sovereignty over a bunch of other islands, and it's not the only one. There's a bunch of other countries that claim sovereignty over these islands too, So there's a

lot of dispute a territory. You've got countries like China, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines all claiming UH some sovereignty over some of those islands. So what is what's so important about it? Why do we care about this particular location, Well, Taiwan.

I mean, in real estate is location, location, location, and that's kind of the case here because Taiwan is about a hundred miles off of china South eastern coast, and if you were to look at it on a map, it is the biggest land mass between Japan and the Philippines. So it's in this crucial position. And so the US and every other country in the Asia Asia Pacific region sees Taiwan as crucial to containing China and its military

ambitions and economic ambitions. That's just strategically. Then you've got, of course the economics. You guys talk about it all the time. The chip industry the world is completely dependent on Taiwan semiconductors. UH. The island is responsible for about nine of the world's most advanced chips. These are the chips that power your smartphone, your car, the AI and your smartphone, the AI in your car. So it makes

the world go around right now. So, Scar we were talking with the Marlow a little earlier for Bloomberg government, and he wrote a story about the flight path of Nancy Pelosis that was fascinating. It was fascinating right avoiding the South China see very clearly, I mean flying around it in a way that you know, it's kind of reminiscent of of you know, countries making sure they avoid Russia and Ukraine during wartime. So talk to us a little bit about China's relationship with Taiwan and where it

stands right now. It's really really complicated, is the short answer. It's really actually quite convoluted as well, because if you go back to recent history, um Japan had to give up Taiwan to China after losing World War Two. But there was a civil war in China, so the Nationalist government that was in China was defeated by the Communist Party. They fled the mainland and set up shop in Taiwan.

They were supported by the US government, which recognized the Nationalist Party as the rightful government but temporarily displaced government of China, and then everything's whitched when the US decided to change sides and recognize the Communist government in Beijing instead. So in doing so, it recognized that Beijing is the seat of government for China. There's only one China, and it is the government in Beijing. UH. And China has a one China policy. The US agrees with that. UH.

Taiwan is part of China. The US agrees with that, But at the same time, it hasn't really clarified what it would do if China were to take Taiwan. And taking Taiwan by force, taking Taiwan by welcoming it back not clear. There's a lot of intentional ambiguity when it comes to Taiwan and where it fits in with the One China policy when it comes to how the US is going to act on anything. So why all the I want to say chaos when it comes to the foreign policy here, because if you said, like you said,

the one China policy, then why support Taiwan. Why is this such a big deal? Well, the US has pledged to support Taiwan, and it also sells um some military equipment to Taiwan as well, and it's very much support did Taiwan in many ways, but China sees that as a threat because China regards Taiwan as a domestic issue. If Taiwan is part of China, this is a domestic issue. The US has no role or no say in any

of this. Thirty seconds left, Scarlet, what about the identities of the people in Taiwan and they identify that's a great question. As time goes by, more and more people see themselves as Taiwanese as opposed to Chinese ethnically more than the people in Taiwan can trace their roots to the mainland. But as time goes by, that that taie to the mainland really is more and more distant, and

they start culturally and politically seeing themselves as Taiwanese. Really really awesome to speak with you, Scarlet Fu, my colleague from Bloomberg quicktake, and this is why I love the Bloomberg news room. I mean, you've got people from all over who've lived and worked in Asia for eight years, Scarlet being one of that, and they come back and they share their experience with a Scarlet Fu from Bloomberg quick take. Really appreciate you taking the time roam a

journal have but you let me drive. Oh no, no, no no, no, oh please, I'll do the dride gravels. I want to drive. It's good question. This is the drive to the clothes well up on Bluebird Radio. Oh my goodness, we're already there. We got nine minutes to go to the end of trading. The Dow is the clear laggard right now, down by more than one percent, being pulled down by Caterpillar. But we got a lot to talk about, not just the Dow or the SNP or the NASDAC or today, but

really the big picture right now. We had a great guest with us to do that for our drive to the closed segment. Abbe desh pon Day is the founder and ce IO at Center Stone Investors. Abbe joining us once again on the phone from New York City. Abe, it's been a few months. How are you all right? That's yeah, it's good to have you with us. Um, okay, I want to talk about some of your picks. We'll do that in just a second. Love hearing you know

what you've got your eye on. But first I want to get your thoughts on where we are in the markets is the bottom in It's completely dependent on whether or not there is going to be a recession or like a real recession, unemployment spiking and all that stuff. I don't think we really know yet. There's this in

between period. So um my, my thoughts are that for the most part, other than like a financial crisis, we have rolling recessions in this country that affects certain parts of the economy, and the interest rates having done with they have done, clearly introduces the threat of the recession you know in housing related and high ticket capital goods type um areas. But that doesn't necessarily be a consumer recession, and consumer drives most of the economy. So I'm of

two minds. Um. One, we could have a recession of part of the economy and maybe not in another more significant part of the economy, and that allows for the stock market to um kind of you know, we went do's that's kind of enough. So when you say recession and part of the economy, do you mean what are you referring to? I mean, are you for into manufacturing retail?

Mean because they consumers? You know, we're learning some interesting stuff from companies, right now yeah, I mean some of those interesting things are that there's been no impact on unless you're at the lower end, right, like with a Target or Walmart. Yeah, and even then that's mostly done trying to cycle through. You know, everybody last quarter of last year just double ordered a bunch of stuff because of the shipping delays and all that. Now they've had

to discount that. That's that's not because demand has fallen off of Cliff, It's because they've got a new product out of their stores, perishable products sometimes. Um. I mean that you clearly have a lot of you know, um stressors and economy of prices having risen in food, you know, shortages around the world creating an impact even here in the United States, oil prices having been fuel prices having gone up. But um, you know you don't quite see

the impact on the ground yet. Um outside of house which is where you expect mortgages rates have gone up as much as I think you had it the way. Um. You know, for us the answer is always been to be diversified. Um. That means across the world, Uh, not to be targeted specifically like I don't know, tech stocks and what have you, or even just value stocks. We're value investors, um, so you know our preferences to find

securities that traded discounts to their their intrinsic value. But there are you know, looking at our portfolio, which we center so we build it from the bottom up. There are some interesting themes that are developing, you know, so walk us through them. Well, one is that you're you know,

we only a company called Granger. It's industrial parts distribution or I guess it feeds industrial plants and what not with the parts that they need, um for producing you know, anything from cars to windows, and uh, their business is really humming. And there's you know, there's there's something to be said about a longer term trend of on shoring of the supply chain into back into North America, United

States and Canada. So companies like that maybe as how you said you own it, when did you get in uh many many years ago. I was looking at the stock chart and wow, this is quite the stock chart, folks. Wwww and it is actually a massive acceleration from the bottom of it's actually at a record high and stock price right now. Shares here five are you're not concerned as too expensive? Um? I mean it's it depends on

what kind of business you think this is. If it's if you think it's a cyclical company that you know, we'll just go up and down with the industrial cycles, then yeah, maybe it's on the higher end of its evaluation. If you think there's sales winding the sales because of a longer term growth factor that was not here before it's been asking for a long time, which is the reshoring of supply chains, then possibly you have a more of a franchise element for this, which we would mean

that this is not especially um. You know, the evidence points to to um that they're being a wind for a lot of wind in their sales. If you just look at the current numbers, you think that they start to talk about slowing demand and all that, that's not happening. They're talking about accelerating demands. All right, I'll be um. We talked Ranger. Let's talk a CSL Carlisle Companies Incorporated. What's going on there? Yeah, it's sort of the same.

Then you think that at some point the oil prices going up, you think that demand and pricing for them would kind of contract a little bit, but they make they you know, to just put it real basic they make roofs, uh like for warehouses and factories and that kind of thing, big big, huge routs, and you know, as manufacturing is starting to head back into this country again,

I think there's more demand. There was clearly some just pent up demand from you know, the world being shut down for a few months for for you know, a year or two, so there's some catch up, but there seems to be there seems to be some additional wind in their sales to those stocks are also kind of reflected that it's not reflecting a concern that the site that it's a cyclical stock and things should uh you know revert to the means, so so to speak, it

seems like the market suggests that there's you know, long term growth. Yeah. Really interesting to look at these two charts compared with one another. They can kind of have similar trends with their movements recently creating. Yeah, they really do. And I the reason I pushed on are these two expensive because a lot of people are saying, well, active picking,

active investing, that's the way to go here. All right, ob we got thirty seconds left with you give us your theme on when it comes to Emerging Asia tourism, emerging. This is again kind of construction from the bottom. If we keep on finding a bunch of stocks that are looking very low priced compared to their prospects, and the prospects are accelerating rapidly. So companies like not a court. This is like a small random company, but not your

corp in Cambodia, hinting in Malaysia, which are casino operators. Uh, you know if you're like my, my benchmark for tourism is Bali what's going on in and they're about was in May about of COVID pre COVID teak and now I mean from reports I see it's just completely full. Abbe, We unfortunately have to leave it there. We're out of time, but you've got to come back. Abbe deshpon Day, founder and ce IO at center Stone Investors. Thanks for listening

to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com, and you can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube. Sarah to Bloomberg Global News