The Boston Globe - 13.08.2019

C4 Business The Boston Globe TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019

25

THEBOSTONGLOBE

Indexof publicly traded companiesin Massachusetts

Stocks fell sharply Monday, knocking nearly 400 points off
the Dow. The S&P 500 had its worst day in a week as the
sell-off put the market deeper into the red for August. Tech
companies and banks accounted for much of the decline.
Investors sought safety in US bonds, sending their yields
tumbling. The US-China trade war has rattled markets this
month, stoking worries the long-running conflict will un-
dercut an already slowing global economy. The major in-
dexes are down more than 3 percent for August. But even
after this month, they are up this year, led by the Nasdaq,
with a gain of 18.5 percent. The S&P 500 is up nearly 15
percent, but down 4.7 percent from its record, set at the
end of July. Traders continued to shift money into bonds ,
sending bond prices up. That pulled down the yield on the
10-year Treasury to 1.64 percent from 1.73 percent late Fri-
day, a big move. Bank of America fell 2.4 percent, and Citi-
group gave up 2.7 percent. Credit card issuer Synchrony Fi-
nancial slid 3.9 percent, and Capital One Financial dropped
2.3 percent. Symantec fell 5.7 percent, Nektar Therapeutics
slumped 11.2 percent, and Tractor Supply fell 4.7 percent.

Markets

Ongoing trade war rattles stocks

DOW JONES industrial average

NASDAQ Composite index

S&P 500 index

Globe 25 index

SOURCE:BloombergNews

them to an office tower would

be a tremendous hit to the Chi-

natown community.”

Oxford has said it would like

to include those businesses —

which remain open for now —

in the project or help them find

them new locations in the

neighborhood.

The developer also says its

building would generate $4.

million in funding for afford-

able housing. Mark McGowan,

its head of development in Bos-

ton, said he hopes the project

would better connect the neigh-

borhood to the Rose Fitzgerald

Kennedy Greenway and make

uTOWER

Continued from Page C

room for more job growth near

South Station.

“We look forward to collabo-

rating with the community to

address comments as this pro-

cess moves forward,” McGowan

said in a statement.

Still, the blistering response

is a setback for Oxford, the real

estate arm of a Canadian mu-

nicipal pension fund that has

bought several major down-

town office buildings in recent

years and wants to make 125

Lincoln its first development

project in Boston.

It paid $40 million to buy

the garage two years ago and

has said it believes there is a

strong demand for more office

space in the area.

BPDA staff will consider the

comments as part of their ongo-

ing review of the project; a

spokeswoman said they will be

“taken into account before de-

terminingnextsteps.”

Oxford does have support-

ers, though. Dozens of Boston

residents — most of them living

in neighborhoods far from the

site — signed form letters that

called it “a tremendous oppor-

tunity” to turn an aging garage

into a modern building.

A few neighborhood resi-

dents spoke up for it, as well,

noting that other tall buildings

have been approved on the edg-

es of Chinatown

“This is downtown Boston,”

wrote John Winkler. “If a build-

ing like this is not built here

where do we expect it to go?”

But Leather District resident

Rob Geary pointed to Oxford’s

home north of the border.

“Canada has always been a

great neighbor. Until now,” he

wrote to the BPDA.

“Please encourage these

people to go back across the

border and build their awful

structure in Halifax or Saska-

toon.”

Tim Logan can be reached at

[email protected]. Follow

him on Twitter at

@bytimlogan.

Planforhigh-risedrawsprotests

from Natalia’s neurologist at

Massachusetts General Hospi-

tal after the Globe story was

published, AveXis concluded

the toddler did indeed have the

worst form and was entitled to

receive Zolgensma as an experi-

mental drug.

“We are pleased that we are

able to treat this child” under

the program that AveXis set up

with the FDA “now that we

have received the proper docu-

mentation,” a company spokes-

woman said in an e-mail to the

Globe.

Although the compassionate

use program ended the day the

FDA approved Zolgensma, Na-

talia and several other patients

were already in a queue to re-

ceive it if deemed eligible,

AveXis said.

Natalia is expected to get

the medicine later this month,

according to the staff of her

neurologist, Dr. Kathryn Swo-

boda.

The FDA approved Zolgens-

ma for all forms of the disease,

but only for children up to the

age of 2. The compassionate

use program made the drug

available free to Type 1 patients

older than 2 if they weighed

less than 29 pounds and met

other criteria. Natalia weighs

26 pounds.

uZOLGENSMA

Continued from Page C

Swoboda said she believes

the turn of events illustrates

that the way the medical world

classifies the four forms of spi-

nal muscular atrophy may need

to change.

There was never any doubt

in her mind that Natalia had

the worst form, Swoboda said.

Natalia began gasping for air in

2017, when she was about five

weeks old, and had a breathing

tube temporarily inserted into

her throat. She spent more

than two months in the pediat-

ric intensive care unit at Mass.

General.

But since late 2017, Natalia

has received 10 injections of an

earlier breakthrough drug,

Spinraza, sold by the Cam-

bridge biotech Biogen. Ap-

proved the year before, Spinra-

za was the first treatment for

spinal muscular atrophy. It’s in-

jected into the spinal canal and

helps make more of a protein

that controls muscle move-

ment.

That drug doesn’t come

cheap, either: It’s $125,000 for

each 5-milliliter dose. Patients

need six doses the first year, at a

cost of $750,000, and three dos-

es every year afterward, at an

annual expense of $375,000.

Spinraza saved Natalia’s life,

Swoboda said. But the girl’s

survival and ability to sit briefly

now, the neurologist said, evi-

dently led AveXis officials to in-

correctly believe she had the

less severe form of the disease

and didn’t need Zolgensma.

“I think it’s the right deci-

sion,” she said of AveXis’s

change of heart. “I personally

believe she will have a signifi-

cant added benefit from the

gene therapy. Spinraza has

helped her tremendously. But

she has a lot of ongoing medical

issues.”

In clinical trials, Zolgensma

helped infants and young chil-

dren breathe on their own and

achieve motor milestones, like

sitting up without support.

AveXis hardly wants more

controversy about Zolgensma.

Last Tuesday, the FDA dis-

closed that the company had

delayed disclosing to the gov-

ernment that one or more peo-

ple at the subsidiary had ma-

nipulated animal testing data

for the gene therapy, although

the agency said the drug should

remain on the market.

A group of senators, includ-

ing presidential hopefuls Eliza-

beth Warren of Massachusetts

and Bernie Sanders of Ver-

mont, subsequently blasted No-

vartis in a letter to the FDA.

The data manipulation, they

wrote, “smacks of the pharma-

ceutical industry’s privilege and

greed.”

The FDA has said it’s consid-

ering whether to bring civil or

criminal penalties against No-

vartis and its subsidiary.

Jonathan Saltzman can be

reached at

[email protected].

Girl will

get $2.1m

therapy,

after all

The diamond-polymer

blend is sprayed onto the prod-

uct — an electronic circuit

board, for instance. Because

the diamond dust is so fine, a

speck of material no wider than

a human hair is large enough to

tag the item. And because the

bits of diamond are distributed

at random inside the material,

no two tags will ever be the

same. This makes it impossible

to copy, or “clone” one of the

tags.

uDIAMOND DUST

Continued from Page C

Next, the manufacturer

scans the diamond tag, using a

device similar to a supermarket

bar code scanner. This reads

the randomly-scattered bits of

diamond and generates a

unique digital code. The manu-

facturer stores the code in a da-

tabase, which can be made

available to its customers. This

way, an aircraft company that

buys circuit boards can instant-

ly confirm that the new batch of

boards are the real deal. A

worker just runs a board

through a diamond dust scan-

ner, and checks the resulting

code against the board maker’s

database. If the numbers

match, the board is genuine.

“We see this technology as

rather compelling,” said Chris

Moran, general manager of

Lockheed Martin Ventures. His

parent company makes some of

the US military’s most impor-

tant aircraft, including the F-

35, F-22 and F-16 fighters. But

even for these highly special-

ized airplanes, he said, “there

are potentially lots of counter-

feit parts on the market.” So

Lockheed Martin has begun

testing the DUST Identity sys-

tem for its most critical “Class

I” parts.

Thomas d’Halluin, manag-

ing partner of Airbus Ventures,

said that Airbus is also trying

out the DUST Identity system.

“The probability of counterfeit

parts is a real threat,” d’Halluin

said. “There is no room to nego-

tiate with the safety of our

products.”

Hiawatha Bray can be reached

at [email protected].

Using diamond dust to root out bogus products

Natalia’s blood-oxygen level was measured with a pulse oximeter.

PHOTOS BY NIC ANTAYA FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Natalia Boidi has spinal muscular atrophy, a rare disease that kills more infants than any other inherited disorder.