Day: June 24, 2021

The International Action Centre issues the following statement on the recent judgement of the ECOWAS Court of Justice:

COURT RECONFIRMS ALEX SAAB DETENTION ILLEGAL

NEW YORK, June 24, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In its judgment delivered on 15 March 2021, the ECOWAS Court of Justice declared illegal the arrest and detention of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Nain Saab Moran, ordered his release from further custody, quashed the extradition proceedings against him to the United States and awarded him $200,000 reparation for the violations of his human rights by Cape Verde.

On 15 April, the Government of Cape Verde filed two motions praying the ECOWAS Court to set aside the Judgment. Both motions were vigorously opposed by the defence team of Alex Saab and in today’s decision, which followed a hearing on 31 May, the ECOWAS Court confirmed:

(i) There was no miscalculation of Time Zones when considering when the Interpol Red Notice was received by the Republic of Cape Verde and it had no bearing on the illegality of the arrest and subsequent detention, and
(ii) It is competent in terms of jurisdiction to rule on the matter.

The Defence Team notes that today’s decisions represent the end of the ECOWAS Court Process, and the Republic of Cape Verde has no more excuses to try and justify its non-compliance with the binding decisions of the ECOWAS Court.

Ambassador Saab’s family would like to express its gratitude to the Honourable ECOWAS Court for its steadfast application of law and asks that the Republic of Cape Verde abide by its international obligations and immediately release Alex Saab and end the vindictive extradition process against him.

Alex Saab’s Lead ECOWAS Counsel, Femi Falana SAN, said, “I am delighted that in dismissing Cape Verde’s applications, the Honourable Court has underlined that its decision of 15 March in terms of the illegality of Ambassador Saab’s detention must be respected by Cape Verde. The Defence Team now calls upon the competent authorities of Cape Verde to comply with the ECOWAS Court’s decision, immediately release Alex Saab and end the politically motivated extradition.”

Dr Jose Manuel Pinto Monteiro, Alex Saab’s lead Cape Verde attorney, commented, “Cape Verde is known as a nation which respects its international obligations and the rule of law. I join my colleague Mr Falana in calling upon the Cape Verde authorities to bring an immediate end to the illegal detention of Ambassador Saab, release him and permit him to travel freely to Venezuela.”

MEDIA Contact:
Sara Flounders
International Action Center
https://www.iacenter.org
E-mail: iacenter@iacenter.org
Tel: +1 212-633-6646

Top liver disease conference showcases positive clinical data from Yaqrit’s technologies

Results from two trials presented at EASL¹ International Liver Conference 2021 show benefits for patients with liver failure and those with advanced cirrhosis

London, UK, 24 June, 2021 – New treatments for liver disease patients have been given top billing at this week’s International Liver Congress (ILC), one of the biggest global meetings for liver doctors and researchers, including technologies being developed by Yaqrit Discovery Ltd (‘Yaqrit’ or the ‘Company’), a UK life sciences company developing treatments for patients with cirrhosis and its complications, an area of global unmet medical need.

Dialive™ is an ICU device for patients suffering from acute-on-chronic liver failure

In the first of two presentations on Yaqrit’s Dialive technology, trial data showed that patients had statistically significantly better outcomes when treated with Dialive compared to patients in a control group.

Twice as many patients in the group treated with Dialive resolved from acute on chronic liver failure grades 1, 2 or 3 to ACLF grade 0. The treated group also resolved more quickly than the standard of care group.

Dr Banwari Agarwal, Chief Investigator and presenter of the data at the ILC, commented: “To see patients with ACLF grades 1, 2 and 3a resolving to ACLF 0 at twice the rate with Dialive treatment compared to those in the control group, is simply a remarkable outcome. Furthermore, this improvement was achieved with no treatment-related safety issues, which will be vital as the product enters pivotal studies in a larger population of patients.”

ACLF is a serious condition often treated in the hospital intensive care unit. Patients have a 28-day expected short term mortality rate that ranges from 20% to over 80%². Dialive is an ICU treatment based on the double filtration of blood-borne toxins and the replacement of damaged circulating albumin.

Carbalive™ is an orally-administered macroporous carbon bead solution to treat decompensated cirrhosis

Yaqrit’s second technology, Carbalive, is an adsorbent taken by mouth by patients with decompensated cirrhosis. Decompensated patients are usually hospitalised and at risk of deteriorating further to life-threatening ACLF.

Carbalive also met its primary endpoint of safety in a placebo-controlled clinical trial across Europe and in addition showed positive trends in markers of inflammation and gut health. These measures of gut health included those that signify a reduction in the translocation (leaking) of bacterial toxins out of the gut, an important factor in cirrhosis³.

Dr Jane McNaughton, a University College London hepatologist presenting the data at ILC, said “These findings in decompensated cirrhosis patients pave the way for the next stage of clinical development, which will be to evaluate Carbalive in dedicated efficacy studies and in higher risk patient populations.”

The EU Horizon 2020-supported clinical trials of Dialive and Carbalive were conducted in hospitals across Europe respectively by two academic-industrial consortia, ALIVER and CARBALIVE. Both technologies had previously strong preclinical data at University College London, where they had been invented and developed by Professor Rajiv Jalan and colleagues at the Liver Failure Group based at the Royal Free Hospital, London.

Professor Rajiv Jalan M.D., Professor of Hepatology at UCL, Yaqrit’s lead founder, said, “Carbalive’s design is based on many observations of the course of patients in liver decompensation and the damaging inflammation that results. It’s pleasing to see that not only has its safety been shown in this study but that there are encouraging signs of benefits to patients, which we hope will be confirmed in future trials.”

“The randomised controlled clinical trials conducted with two of Yaqrit’s development programmes product candidates yielded promising clinical results, and those obtained with Dialive exceeded our expectations”, said Daniel Green, CEO of Yaqrit. “We look forward to expanding our trials globally for both Carbalive and Dialive.”

At the International Liver Congress, Dr Agarwal’s presentation is:

Session: Global Session – 1997
Date/Time: 24 June 2021, 4 pm CEST
Abstract: A multi-centre, randomized controlled study, to evaluate the safety and performance of the DIALIVE Liver Dialysis Device in patients with Acute on Chronic Liver Failure (ACLF) versus standard of care (SOC)

At the International Liver Congress, Dr McNaughtan’s presentation is:

Session: PO-1045
Date/Time: 26 June 2021, 9.08 am CEST
Abstract: A Double Blind, Randomised, Placebo-Controlled Study To Assess Safety and Tolerability of Oral Enterosorbent Yaq-001 In Cirrhotic Patients (CARBALIVE Consortium)

At the International Liver Congress, Dr Bañares’s presentation is:

Session: OS-2060
Date/Time: 26 June 2021, 10.15 am CEST
Abstract: Pathophysiological basis of resolution of Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure (ACLF) induced by the novel liver dialysis device, DIALIVE

About the ALIVER Consortium
The ALIVER consortium includes many of Europe’s leading experts in liver failure and the hospitals where they work, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and not-for-profit organisations, with 25 years of experimental research and data collection exploring extracorporeal liver support in liver failure. DIALIVE research has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 733057.For more information visit www.aliver.info

About the CARBALIVE Consortium

Humans have nearly 10 trillion intestinal bacteria. This is the gut microbiome, which both plays an important role in human health and is the largest reservoir of antigens and bacterial products in the body. If the gut is damaged, as is the case in liver disease, the bacterial products can leak from the gut to the liver where they cause inflammation and injury. These changes happen in chronic liver disease and in cirrhosis. Gut microbes also play a role in the progression of fatty liver disease to advanced liver disease, and it is these challenges that the CARBALIVE consortium was established to address. The Carbalive consortium has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 634579. For more information visit www.carbalive.eu

About Yaqrit Discovery Ltd

Yaqrit is a clinical stage life sciences company focused on developing innovative treatments for patients with advanced liver disease in areas of high unmet medical need. The Company was founded by internationally renowned hepatologist Professor Rajiv Jalan of UCL, who has three decades of clinical, academic and research experience in treating patients with chronic liver disease. The Company has developed a clinical stage pipeline led by three programs: Carbalive and Dialive, both of which have complete randomised controlled clinical trials, and TLR4 antagonists, the most advanced of which is being developed by Akaza Bioscience, a collaboration with Takeda. These programs are designed to address unmet medical needs across the advanced stages of chronic liver disease from medically stable patients with decompensated cirrhosis in the outpatient setting, to critically ill, hospitalised patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure. The application of the different therapeutic approaches to specific patient groups is based upon the Company’s deep understanding of the pathway and stratification of patients with chronic liver disease. For more information visit www.yaqrit.com

Contacts

For further information is also available at www.aliver.info and www.carbalive.eu

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¹ EASL : European Association For The Study Of The Liver
² “The systemic inflammation hypothesis: Towards a new paradigm of acute decompensation and multiorgan failure in cirrhosis. Arroyo et al JHEP 2020

³ Leaky Gut and Gut-Liver Axis in Liver Cirrhosis: Clinical Studies Update – Fukui et al Gut Liver 2020 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33071239/

Capital will help accelerate JW Player’s growth and expand its already robust platform, empowering customers with independence and control in the Digital Video Economy

NEW YORK, June 24, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — JW Player, the leading video software and data insights platform, today announced it has raised $100M in Series E funding from LLR Partners. The latest investment comes on the heels of record video streaming growth and strong profitability during the previous 12 months. With this financing, JW Player will accelerate product innovation to meet the rapidly changing demands of customers in today’s digital video environment, expand its global go-to-market footprint across sales, marketing and channel partnerships and continue to grow and invest in building a world-class team.

The funding round follows JW Player’s recent acquisition of VUALTO, a leading provider of live and on-demand video streaming and Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions, that deepened the company’s offering to global broadcasters. In the days following the acquisition, JW Player has seen a material uptick and influx of sales and pipeline, especially in the LATAM and APAC regions.

Started as a hugely-popular open source video player, JW Player’s API-driven video platform now empowers hundreds of thousands of customers to independently control and operate their mobile, OTT and Web video applications at global scale. Importantly, JW Player includes unique data-driven services and knowledge so that customers can more effectively grow and engage their audiences and generate more incremental revenue from their video investments. In the last year alone, the company’s video streaming grew by nearly 200%, while its live streaming delivery increased by over 400%.

This financing arrives as the consumption of digital video continues its push to the mainstream. Video now comprises over 80% of all traffic on the internet, and according to JW Player data, people are consuming over two hours of digital video each day, a 40% increase since the beginning of 2020. As a result, a digital video strategy has become a ‘must have’ not only for media companies, but also for organizations of all types, including fitness, e-commerce, sports and e-learning businesses, among others. These organizations have a diverse range of needs, require a flexible video platform that allows them to engage with their audiences on the screens of their choice and demand a quantifiable ROI from their video investments. Given these dynamics, the addressable market is on target to grow from $14B today to $50B by 2027, a 20% CAGR.

“Video has entered into a golden age, and we now live in the Digital Video Economy. By combining our easy-to-use video platform technology with our unique consumption and contextual data insights, JW Player has a distinct advantage in helping customers grow their audiences, create world-class video experiences on any screen, and most importantly, generate more revenue,” said Dave Otten, CEO and co-founder of JW Player. “As we enter this next phase, we are thrilled to partner with LLR. LLR’s team brings decades of unmatched support and expertise in growing industry-changing software companies and will undoubtedly help us accelerate our success as we pursue this massive market opportunity together.”

“JW Player has been at the forefront of digital video innovation ever since founder Jeroen Wijering created YouTube’s original video player in 2008. Today, the company offers the most comprehensive technology, advertising and data analytics platform in the digital video ecosystem,” said David Reuter, Partner at LLR Partners. “We look forward to partnering with the JW Player team as they expand their platform and continue to elevate the way brands can host, stream and monetize video.”

About JW Player
JW Player is the leading video software and data insights platform that gives customers independence and control in today’s Digital Video Economy. Started in 2008 as a hugely popular open-source video player, JW Player ’s technology platform now powers digital video for hundreds of thousands of businesses, including half of the comScore top 50 sites in the US, leading broadcasters across EMEA, APAC and Latin America. Each month 1 billion viewers, or one third of all people on the Internet, consume video on JW Player’s technology across 2.7 billion devices, creating an unmatched and powerful consumption and contextual data graph that helps customers grow audiences and generate incremental video from digital video. The company is headquartered in New York, with offices in London and Eindhoven, visit http://www.jwplayer.com.

About LLR Partners
LLR Partners is a middle market private equity firm investing in technology and healthcare businesses. We collaborate with our portfolio companies to identify and execute on key growth initiatives and help create long-term value. Founded in 1999 and with more than $5 billion raised across six funds, LLR is a flexible provider of equity capital for growth, recapitalizations and buyouts. Learn more at https://www.llrpartners.com/.

Media Contacts:
Fatimah Nouilati
Scratch Marketing + Media for JW Player
fatimah@scratchmm.com

Kristy DelMuto
LLR Partners
kdelmuto@llrpartners.com

Shuttle to operate remotely over Rogers 5G network thanks to one of several key research partnerships

Waterloo, Ontario, June 24, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The University of Waterloo is showcasing the operation of a driverless, autonomous shuttle research program that will transport students and staff around campus.

The demonstration of the shuttle, dubbed “WATonoBus” by the research team, is the first of its kind at a Canadian academic institution and marks a significant milestone in a multi-year initiative to demonstrate and integrate autonomous transportation onto the campus.

This milestone features another significant technological advancement, as the shuttle becomes the first in the country to operate remotely over Rogers 5G network, thanks to a Rogers partnership agreement with the University to advance 5G research in the Toronto-Waterloo tech-corridor. This past September, as Rogers expanded Canada’s largest and most reliable 5G network to reach more communities, it lit up the University’s 5G Smart Campus to support researchers developing 5G applications and use cases in a real-world setting.

The shuttle’s 5-stop, 2.7-kilometre journey around the Waterloo main campus, intersecting with the campus light rail transit stop, holds the potential to help reshape how entire communities move around their urban spaces.

“We are thrilled not only about WATonoBus, but what it represents,” said Feridun Hamdullahpur, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo. “By marrying transformational research, infrastructure and a network of industry and government partnerships, we are demonstrating that educational institutions will help shape the future – in this case, the convergence of public transportation and smart urban mobility.”

The driverless shuttle with remote takeover capability will showcase a full-system approach, developed entirely at the University of Waterloo, led by Professor Amir Khajepour and a team of over 20 researchers in the Mechatronic Vehicle Systems Laboratory. Funding support has been provided by federal and provincial partners, as well as contributions from Applanix, RoboSense AI, and Rogers to make WATonoBus a reality.

The technology includes an integrated on-board sensor system providing vehicle intelligence and control; a suite of front, rear and side cameras providing a 360-degree view; light detection and ranging (LIDAR) active remote sensing systems used for detecting objects; and a WATonoBus smartphone app to help passengers navigate the campus using the shuttle.

“Today’s demonstration represents over four years of work with support and collaboration with government and industry partners,” Khajepour said. “This is an exciting step forward in autonomous, driverless public transportation.”

And, for the first time in Canada, an autonomous shuttle will be operated entirely on a remote basis using a 5G network. The modem on board will communicate through the Rogers 5G network with a research lab-based control centre. In the control centre, a remote operator will monitor the WATonoBus operations, and take over control when needed to ensure safe movement.

“As real-world 5G use cases such as the WATonoBus begin to take shape, we are starting to see the potential of 5G come to life,” said Jorge Fernandes, Chief Technology Officer at Rogers Communications. “Smart cities and smart transportation solutions are poised to help make cities safer, more efficient and more environmentally friendly. This example of 5G innovation demonstrates the importance of fostering 5G research and development to help fuel industries and drive Canada’s digital economy forward. We are proud to help enable this important 5G moment as part of our partnership with the University of Waterloo.”

Since lighting up the campus with 5G last year, Rogers has added next generation network technology and capabilities that will enable more intelligent and complex use cases and applications, including 5G mmWave (28GHz) small cells on campus, both inside buildings and outdoors, providing ultra-low latency and high bandwidth to support a variety of  5G research projects underway at the University.

The demonstration is the latest step of a multi-year initiative that is creating a testbed to evaluate automated driving on campus. Future industry partnerships will add more elements of a smart city on campus, a living testbed for advanced research, product development and data collection.

Before commencing operation as a regular service, the driverless shuttle system requires approval from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO). Currently, the University of Waterloo is a registered participant in Ontario’s Automated Vehicle Pilot Program, which permits testing of driverless AVs on Ontario roads provided a safety operator is on board.

Federal and provincial funding for the WATonoBus project has been provided through the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Research Fund and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

Rebecca Elming
University of Waterloo
226-929-7627
relming@uwaterloo.ca