October 12, 2025 • 58 mins
This week the New England Business Report takes a look at the September Business Confidence Index. Chris Geehern from AIM reports the index has slipped for the 7th month. He'll tell us why. Don Seiffert from the BBJ joins us to talk about a number of business headlines. Then we learn about holiday shopping predictions. The all important season for retailers is just around the corner. Anil Chitkara, co founder of Evolv Technologies has details of a recent safety trade show and what business owners are most concerned about when it comes to protecting their employees and customers. And finally, Dr. David Sherr, a researcher for the "Find the Cause" Foundation is our guest to talk about breast cancer awareness month and funding for ongoing research.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the New England Business Report with Joe short
Sleeve and Kim Carrigan, a weekly roundup and discussion of
the top business news impacting our New England economy.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the New England Business
Report on this Sunday, October the twelfth. It is so
great to have you along. I'm Kim Carrigan and Joe Shortsleeve.
Has the week off, of course, another very busy week
in the world of business. We have a continuing government
shut down and we'll have some interviews this morning that
(00:31):
reflect the business sentiment about that. Lots of good things
come in your way here on the New England Business
Report this morning, so let's take a look at what
some of those might be. As I mentioned that government shutdown,
which certainly has an impact on the story that our
next first guest rather is going to be bringing us.
Christopher Geehearn is the executive vice president to Public Affairs
(00:54):
and Communications at the Associated Industries of Massachusetts. We all
know that as aim. Unfortunately, last month's Business Confidence Index
in the Bay State showed that business leaders are getting
more and more pessimistic about the economy, and this has
been a trend for the last few months. Chris is
going to join us to talk a little bit more
(01:15):
about why he believes that trend is continuing, what he's
hearing from business leaders, and what business leaders are thinking
about when we talked about this shutdown of the federal government.
Donzeiffert will be our guest, the managing editor or the
Boston Business Journal. He's got a number of stories he
wants to talk about, including a big sale that's going on.
(01:35):
Here's a clean energy company that's been here in the
city for the last fifteen years. They actually produce batteries,
and apparently they are closing down shop and there's a
few things they're going to be selling. So he's going
to share that story. Market basket saga just continues to
go on. We had yet another firing this past week,
(01:56):
of course, a loyalist to RDT, so on, we'll share
that story. And if you're a woman in the state
and you're interested in going to one of our all
women's colleges, you just might be able to go for free.
That's right, I said free. So he's going to explain that. Okay,
now I know that I told you off the top
that it's October twelfth, and so we haven't even gotten
(02:17):
to Halloween, but believe it or not, predictions for the
upcoming holiday season spending already starting to surface. Simon Kuach Sure.
They are a global pricing consultancy and they have an
office here in Boston. They have conducted their annual holiday
shopping report. And I know this may be shocking to you,
but Black Friday is less than six weeks away and predictions,
(02:42):
believe it or not, for retailers. Even though business leaders
are pessimistic about the economy, apparently consumers are not, because
the predictions look pretty darn good. So we're going to
be chatting about that. Also this morning, more and more
businesses are expanding or considering more security measures to protect
their employees and their customers. I don't think that's a
surprise probably to any of us. We're going to have
(03:05):
a discussion with a co founder of All Technologies about
a recent trade show that really brought to light some
of the safety concert plaguing some of these business owners
today and how a lot of them want to go
about addressing it again. Their number one goal in so
many cases is to make sure first and foremost that
their employees are safe, and then of course, that their
(03:26):
customers are safe as well, So we are going to
have a conversation about that. I have a feeling that
may ring true for a lot of our listeners who
are business owners out there. October is Breast cancer Awareness month.
Many of us have either had or know someone who
has battle breast cancer, no two ways about that. And
while so many advances have come to light when it
(03:49):
comes to treatment, which is terrific, wouldn't it be great
if the research community could find the cause and we
could prevent it and then we wouldn't have to worry
about all of those treatments. Well, I have to tell
you there is a foundation out there that is attempting
to do just that. It's called Find the Cause, and
(04:10):
they have researchers, world renowned researchers who dedicate their entire
lives at this point to just trying to find the
cause for breast cancer, which ultimately would lead to finding
the cause to other kinds of cancers. But you know,
getting funding for this kind of thing and the environment
that we are in right now can be very difficult.
(04:33):
So we're going to talk to one of those wonderful
researchers find out where they stand when it comes to
trying to find a cause to breast cancer and then
find out what their experience is like. Right now when
it comes to funding again, it's a difficult climate for funding.
And we're going to chat with that really incredible researcher.
And by the way, when you hear some of the
(04:54):
things that they are learning about our environment and why
that may be causing breast cancer, I think you're going
to be really surprised. So a great show coming your
way this morning, and we're so glad that you're with us.
But first this morning, I've said this before and I'm
going to say it again. I have to tell you
uncertainty in my estimation, may be the best word to
(05:15):
describe twenty twenty five when it comes to the economy.
I mean, the economy is showing signs of progress. It is,
but at a slow pace. There are tariffs and possible
interest rate cuts, and now, of course we've got a
government shut down that's left business owners very shaky. Joining
us to talk about the September Business Confidence Index. Is
(05:36):
the executive vice president of Public Affairs and Communications at
the Associated Industries of Massachusetts. We all know it as AIM.
This is Chris Garon, Chris, great to have you.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Along, Great to be here, Kim.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
You think that do you agree with me? You certainly
don't have to. Is uncertainty. You think, when it's all
said and done, you know, on the thirty first of December,
when we look back at the year, do you think
we're going to all say that was the word of the.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I think so it's a word we hear more often
than any other word as we're talking to our thirty
four hundred member companies throughout the year, and it's what
we're seeing with the Business Confidence Index. It's an interesting
dichotomy that we see and that employers have been, you know,
(06:21):
slightly pessimistic in their outlooks for seven months now, even
though the underlying fundamentals of the economy look pretty good.
And the difference, the reason for that split is uncertainty.
They are uncertain about tariffs, they're uncertain about inflation, they're
(06:43):
uncertain about federal support and mass research companies. They're uncertain
about the cost of doing business, and they're uncertain about
AI and other technologies that are changing the market pretty quickly.
So that's a pretty heaping bowl of uncertainty. So your
thought is absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, well, let's talk about the September numbers first, and
then we can back up a bit and take a
look at how they compare to what's been happening. You
said seven month trend, right, is that the longest trend
you've seen like this a downward slip or the longest
one in a while.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Is the it's the longest trend of pessimism since twenty
twenty for obvious reasons. Then with the pandemic, then we
saw pessimism from March twenty twenty all the way to
the end of the year. But this is the longest
longest time in pessimistic territory since then.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
So let's talk about September. Tell us what did the
numbers look like.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
So in September, the Business Confidence Index fell one point
five points to forty seven point five. We measure confidence
on a one hundred point scale, and anything above fifty
we consider generally optimistic. Anything below fifty is pessimistic. So
(08:03):
those numbers again pessimistic, Yes, wildly pessimistic. No, it's kind
of hanging right around that midpoint. The other interesting thing
about September was it was five point seven points less
than it was during the same month a year ago,
so we have lost ground. Interestingly enough, however, amid the
(08:29):
general pessimism, the employment index, which is one element of
what we measure, rose three point one point and was
actually an optimistic territory. So amid all the uncertainty, amid
all the kind of red flags that they're looking at,
these employers are still still hiring people, are still looking
(08:52):
to hire people. So that's a good sign.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Well, yeah, that is, and that's actually very surprising. I
think it's interesting. Also, I was reading that the US
data shows that September numbers came in stronger than were anticipated,
you know, when it comes to the economy. So it's
interesting that overall, as we have both mentioned already, you know,
the economy is kind of sneaky doing okay, and yet
(09:20):
these businesses are not feeling so great about it.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And that's the interesting part about the numbers. So so
Massachusetts during the second quarter grew at four and a
half percent, which is at a pretty brisk pace, very respectable,
and the country as a whole grew at three point
eight percent. You know, no question that the employment market
(09:44):
is slowing down. So payroll jobs actually went down here
in Massachusetts, during August, unemployment rate is you know, state
steady at four point eight percent, So if you look
at all the underlying numbers, fairly good news. But again,
the disconnect that employers are seeing is they just don't
(10:08):
know what's going to happen. And one of the you know,
we allow our members who take this survey to give
us a free, free answer about anything that's on their mind,
and one of them said, you know, until we know
how the tariffs are going to be applied in the amount,
our customers have largely stopped buying. So I think that's
(10:29):
that's playing into it significantly in terms of the overall confidence, which.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Is a scary thing as we go into this fourth quarter.
We don't want to see that for certain this barometer
was taken. You spoke to your members prior to the
government shut down. What kind of ramifications might the government
shut down now have on business confidence in the state.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Well, it's certainly not going to help. And there are
two factors to that. One is, if you look at
the September numbers, the worst performing elements were how employers
viewed both the state and the national economy. So to
the extent that they lose confidence in the ability of
(11:10):
our government to in fact govern and do what it's
supposed to do. That's that's not going to help matters.
The other element is that a lot of companies in
Massachusetts to deal with the federal government. You know, we
have a lot of defense contractors, we have a lot
of research and development type of companies. So anything that
impedes those types of economic relationships is not going to
(11:33):
be helpful either.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And Chris, finally, when business owners have low confidence, how
does impact the local economy?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Well, I think going back to the comment that we
just went over, which is the company that said, you know,
our customers have largely stopped buying. That's what's happening. So
if employers, you know, confident employers invest in their business,
is they develop new markets, they hire people, perhaps most importantly,
(12:05):
maybe they put a new addition on their plant. So
all of that reflects the confidence that the employer, the owner,
the business owner has in the future. Conversely, employers who
are not confident or have some concerns about the economy
(12:27):
tend to hold their cards close to the vest. Maybe
they put off the expansion, maybe they don't hire those
extra five people that you know, maybe they would like
to maybe maybe with all the tariff uncertainty, they don't
explore a new market, say in Asia or some other place.
So lack of confidence equates to kind of holding steady,
(12:50):
and it does affect economic growth.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I know, I said last question, but I've got one
more for you.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
That's all right, let's get away.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
What do you anticipate this next month? Will we see
this go into an eighth month or you might it
pick up.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I've larned long ago not to try and predict too much.
In fact, we just had our economic outlook, and Rick
MacDonald from JP Morgan Chase said that twenty twenty five
is the year we all guessed wrong. So at the
risk of guessing wrong again, I think probably this trend
(13:26):
is going to continue unless until a lot of the
political uncertainty and the tariff uncertainty gets settled down. That's
really the big fly anyway.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Well, it sounds like we circled right back to where
we started, and that's the word uncertainty, which seems to
be prevalent certainly in these economic times. Chris, thanks so
much for being a part of the show. Really appreciated
coming up next to the managing editor of the Boston
Business Journal. Don Zeiffert will be our guest. This is
the New England Business Report.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
You are listening to the New England Business Report on
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Speaker 2 (14:09):
Back a little.
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Speaker 2 (16:21):
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Speaker 2 (16:49):
Welcome back to everybody, so good to have you with
us this morning. Joe Shortsleeve has the day off. At
this time of the show, we'd like to take a
look at some of the business headlines from the past week.
Joining us as the managing editor of the Boston Business
Journal to talk about that. Don Seifert is with us. Don,
good to have you along.
Speaker 8 (17:08):
Thanks, Kim.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Been a busy, busy times. Huh, yes, yeah, everybody keeping busy.
Let's look at some of the stories that sort of
stood out this week. The first one that you have
shared with me as a story about a clean energy
company that's been here in the Boston area for the
last fifteen years and now they are closing up shop.
Why didn't you explain?
Speaker 8 (17:30):
Yeah, the company's name is Ambry They and as I said,
it's been for fifteen years. I think it was founded
in twenty ten, was given initial funding by Bill Gates
among other people. And actually at the very end, Bill
Gates was still one of the largest shareholders in the company.
Their core product that they were trying to develop, that
(17:51):
they had developed was a kind of battery. It was
a liquid what they call a liquid metal battery. This
was going to replace you lithium ion batteries, which are
kind of the current state of the art. And uh,
and they've been working on on creating this. They had
a number of number of people, you know, businesses that
(18:13):
were committed to buying them. Their whole problem was they
were never able to raise the money to build a
factory to actually make these you know at scale.
Speaker 9 (18:21):
Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And I think I read that as a result, you know,
they're going to actually sell their intellectual property.
Speaker 8 (18:30):
Yeah, which hopefully that means that the that the technology
will still exist in some form. But yeah, I don't
understand how it works. But somehow, you know this it's
referred to as liquid metal battery. So uh, you know,
I mean, mass just as the whole has been there
has been a hub for clean energy, as everybody knows
I think at this point, and battery development has been
(18:53):
a big part of that. I mean, obviously the battery
development in order to make solar and wind energy more
sustainable and throughout the day and night and uh and
so Ambry was really working on that, uh for a
long time. But I mean it's uh, this uh, this
inability to to build a factory, to get money to
build a factory, kind of reminds me of a story
(19:15):
we talked about, I think a week or two ago
about Sublime Sublime Systems making uh, carbon free concrete, also
not being able to build a uh. You know, they
got their federal funding taken away. So I think that
these I mean, there's no indication that this one had
anything to do with federal cutbacks. I think their problems
started a couple of years ago, so, you know, predating Trump.
(19:37):
But but still it's been kind of hard times for
crean energy companies, I think battery energy in particular.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, it's it's not a good sign, that's for sure.
I guess the hope is that if they can sell
the intellectual property. I know they're selling all their lab equipment.
There's you know, it's a it's a huge sale, right,
But if they can sell that that maybe somebody else
who can find those funds can and continue that that project.
Speaker 8 (20:02):
Yeah, one of the original investors of French energy company
called Total Essay or I guess now it's called Total Energies. Uh,
maybe they would want to buy it, right, sure they
were also uh they were also supported by a company
called Reliance New Energy Solars. So no, I mean I
could see another clean energy company hopefully buying the IP
(20:23):
and making it work.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Sure, absolutely, you know, maybe you already have some facilities
on that exist. Let's change gears here a bit. It
looks like another one bites the dust over there at
market basket. Man. I I have a feeling there's not
a soul in the building.
Speaker 10 (20:39):
Another another firing, the story that never ends.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 8 (20:45):
So so yeah, uh, this one came out a little
earlier this week, and it turns out that a long
time finance officer in the company was fire. It was
interesting it came out, Uh it was it was kind
of a press release just kind of came out of nowhere,
you know. Obviously this comes a couple of weeks after
the CEO uh rtt Arthur T. De Mulis was fired.
(21:09):
So uh, this just came out of the blue, and
we got a press release, you know, kind of from
the PR company that had worked with RTT in the past,
and you know, it just said that this woman use
named Sue de Fresny was was fired, and you know
that that she had and that the reason the company
had given was that she she kind of spoke out
(21:32):
a turn, spoke to the press. She spoke in favor,
you know, in support of RTT as the CEO questioned
the board's actions and firing him and putting him on
leaves in the first place. So then you know, she'd
been there for for decades. Now she's gone as well.
The company did confirm that they had fired her. They said, uh,
(21:52):
let's say that she said that the board had engaged
in wise pretexts and false investigations. They said that she
had disclosed confidential company information and also said that she
was giving untrue negative public statements. It so obviously no
love lost between no exactly executive.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
You know, it's so interesting, don because there had been,
you know, so many people who had been at that
company for a long long time, so obviously they were
supporters of rdt's It just feels like, you know, this
is going to be a systematic unfolding and unwinding of
all the people who have been there for any period
of time, because I would assume most of them are loyal,
(22:36):
were loyal to him.
Speaker 8 (22:37):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean the whole company, the
company's culture as a whole was really built around RTT.
I mean absolutely, you know that employees loved I mean
over the summer. We you know, we already reported that
in July, a couple of other longtime executives were fired.
They were put on leave at the same time as Art.
The RTT was way back in late May, and they
(22:57):
were finally just fired, and they had spoken out about
it and said that, you know, and they also questioned
the board's motives and getting rid of RDT. So it
does seem like they are going through and a lot
of the top leadership that supported RDT are being targeted
right now.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Absolutely. Story in the Boston Business Journal this week about
the fact that certain families could possibly get free tuition
for their daughters if they're interested in going to some
of the women's colleges here in this day. What's going
on there?
Speaker 8 (23:30):
Yeah, Smith's College in Northampton. It's a private school, it's
not very big, but they made their tuition free for
I think, yeah, families with annual incomes of less than
fifty thousand dollars. And it's interesting just because they I mean,
there have been several colleges that have done this recently,
so Smith College is just the most recent. But it
(23:52):
just follows a state. You know, this has really kind
of been a trend in the whole higher ed system
for a while. We now have I think Harvard and
MIT both are Harvard free are excuse me, tuition free
for some students. University of Massachusetts I think they cover
tuition for students make less than seventy five thousand a year,
(24:15):
and other other schools across the country, and you know,
in Massachusetts, this kind of all arguably started with Healey's
plan to make the community colleges free for anybody who
wanted to attend one, which I think is now a
couple of years old. That was back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Well, you know, I mean, these college tuitions have gotten
so out of control and the competition is so stiff
to get you know, students into different schools. I can
see where this is a way of survival.
Speaker 8 (24:43):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, these schools are
giving a great deal of of scholarships anyways to students
who you know, to to these students of you know,
families who aren't making a whole lot of money, so
you can think that they're probably not actually losing a
whole lot of money to just say okay, tuition free,
I mean to And of course making tuition free that
(25:04):
doesn't cover room and board, doesn't cover books, does a
bunch of other stuff, so it still costs money to
go to these schools. You know, it kind of gives
them a bit of a marketing edge that they could say,
you know, we're tuition free for certain people, but you know,
they actually don't have to spend probably a whole lot
more money in order to accomplish it.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Absolutely, we're just about out of time here. Don very
quickly a mass biotech the only one to go public
this year. They actually grew their head camp by seventy
one percent. We were just talking off air, my producer
and I were about a lot of these biotechs, laying
people off. What's going on here.
Speaker 8 (25:41):
Yeah, In past years, we've had multiple biotechs go public.
You know, We've had years with like ten to fifteen
biotechs all the masters to go public. This year we've
had exactly one. It was in February, kind of right
before the tariffs kind of spook the stock markets. And
the name of it is COO Seona Therapeutics. They're working
(26:01):
on cystic fibrosis drugs. So they they pulled off the
only IPO of the year. They raise two hundred and
nineteen million, which is which is pretty good. You know,
anything over two hundred million, I think is pretty decent.
And it turns out they've they've kind of benefited from it.
They came into the year with thirty five people working
for them. They now have about sixty. You know, their
(26:24):
drugs are probably still a ways off from being approved.
I think they're waiting for mid stage trial results next year.
You know Ciona Therapeutics that's based in Waltham, and they
look like they're doing pretty good. So hopefully we'll see
some more IPOs in the in the near future.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Absolutely, he's done, zeiphered, Thank you so much for joining us.
Always interesting still come in your way. You're starting to
think about your holiday shopping. The predictions on what you're
going to spend are out and we're going to share
those with you when we come back right here on
the New England Business Report, Kim and.
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Speaker 5 (28:04):
Are you a brother or sister of one of Greater
Boston's local trade unions and finally thinking about getting ready
to hang up your tools after thirty five years of
working your tailoff. Congratulations, you worked hard to build your
retirement nest egg. But now what Let me help you
break through the nonsense and financial speak so we can
get to the questions that are important to you. As
you know, nothing gets built without a set of plans,
(28:25):
and neither will your financial future. My name is Mike Marshall,
President and CEO of Marshall Wealth Management and creator of
the Marshall Plan, a comprehensive customized plan that will help
you answer important questions in all seven key areas. You
don't have to do it alone. There is no cost
or obligation. Call us at eight five seven three four
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Speaker 2 (29:08):
Welcome back everyone. This is the New England Business Report.
Of course, now I know that you just put out
your moms and your pumpkins, but believe it or not,
Black Friday, it's just more than six weeks away, and
many organized shoppers, I'm not one of them, but many
of them out there are already starting to hunt for
those holiday sales. I'm joined by Sheika Jane. She is
(29:30):
the lead partner at Simon Kutcher, a global pricing consultancy.
She's based here in Boston and they do annually their
Holiday Shopping Report. They've just done their seventh report, and
it's so great to have you with us. Sheika. It
is so hard to believe that people are already starting
to think about the holiday thing. I mean, I feel
(29:52):
like it was just fourth of July, but it is
that time of year.
Speaker 11 (29:55):
I can't believe it is that time of your either, Kim,
and you know what's crazy. I know you talked about
how folks are already getting ready. I would actually say
that when it comes to holiday shopping, it is going
to happen.
Speaker 9 (30:07):
Sooner and sooner.
Speaker 11 (30:08):
And we're seeing that already with Amazon Prime Day and
Walmart and just a lot of the ads focus on
the holidays, so every year they just get pulled sooner
and sooner. What can we do?
Speaker 2 (30:21):
It's amazing. Yeah, it's the holiday creep for sure. So
talk to us a little bit about what the annual
report found out this year.
Speaker 11 (30:28):
Yeah, So this study has been going on for seven
years and it uncovers how consumers around America plan, shop,
and spend during the important holiday shopping season. And the
reason it's so important to know that is because for
so many retailers, the last three months of the year
make up roughly forty percent of their annual revenues. So
(30:51):
the purpose of the study is to deliver meaningful insights
on consumer shopping behavior and to guide businesses because of
what I just mentioned. This year we focused on the
growing role of AI when it comes to the holidays,
the impact of terrorists they're everywhere, changing channel and dynamics,
and how consumer expectations have shifted over time.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
And tell me what you found out, because I would
anticipate that people are going to be a little tighter
with their wallets, but that's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 11 (31:22):
That is not true. I think that what tends to
happen in inflationary environments is that our anchors or our
baselines keep getting reset. So last year, we've you know,
when we ran this study, we said that, okay, what's
going to happen in terms of annual household spend and
actually compared to last year, we've already grown. So we're
(31:46):
anticipating roughly six percent increase in the average household spending,
which translates to roughly one thousand and eighty dollars when
it comes to how they how much they'll spend on
the holidays. So that's one interesting insight. Of course, as
you can imagine that there is this is not uniform
across income levels. Obviously the higher income levels will spend
(32:10):
a lot more than lower income levels, and the number
I gave you was more the average for the entire year.
And also what's going to happen is that consumers are
going to spend across a huge variety of categories, for sure,
but younger people are going to spend more on things
like trips and experiences versus you know, physical products and
(32:32):
so on. There's still going to be spent towards non
essential items more and more and more. And the other
interesting thing that we've been finding and has just been
a trend is that Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue
to provide the best field, but participation in them has
(32:54):
been on a steady decline, on a single digit decline
over the last few years. Friday, for example, is expected
to be down seven percent in terms of folks that
will participate compared to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 10 (33:07):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Really interesting. Yeah, well, people have other means by which
to shop and longer periods to do that. I I unfortunately,
we don't have a ton of time this morning. Let
me ask you this. I thought this was so interesting.
We have a younger set who's going to rely on
AI to tell them where the best deals are.
Speaker 11 (33:24):
That's right. AI is becoming mainstream and it's becoming a
mainstream shopping tool. There's still going to be some trust issues,
but we are going to use it in order to
figure out how to gift, you know, figure out our
shopping lists and gifts for others, finding the best available price,
tracking deals and alerts, you know, summarizing product reviews to
(33:46):
make decision making faster, personalizing gifts and so on, or
just to get information and chatting with an AI assistant.
So it's going to be everywhere, and I think it's
just going to be something everyone uses. It's not just
the younger. It's going to be a cross generation.
Speaker 9 (34:03):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
The holidays moving into the future. Chika, thank you so
much for joining us today.
Speaker 7 (34:08):
All right.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
You know, businesses such as manufacturers and financial institutions, even
pharmaceutical companies, they're putting more and more emphasis on security.
Our next guest recently attended a large trade show or
security for these types of establishments was front and center.
So we're happy to have joining us the co founder
of Waltham based Evolved Technologies, that's of course a safety
(34:31):
detection company and they'll check Kara is with us and Nil.
It's great to have you, like always. First thing I'd
love for you to do is tell us a little
bit about this trade show. It's called GSX.
Speaker 10 (34:43):
It is so there's two major security trade shows, physical
security trade shows GSX and the fall and is another
one I in the spring, and there's about twenty thousand
people that go there. There's lots of different types of equipment,
service providers, all the people around the security ecosystem. And
(35:03):
this year was interesting. It was down in New Orleans.
Many years, there's a range of large companies, small companies,
partners that are there and a lot of times they're
looking at the latest in cameras or the latest in
access control and door locks or turnstiles, and this year
was different. It was noticeably different. There was a very
(35:24):
strong focus on weapons detection, and that focus was coming
from some of the largest companies there, so manufacturing companies
that we all know, pharmaceutical companies, banks, financial services companies.
And I think this is a result of some of
the events that we've seen over the last few months.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, I mean that must have been very surprising to you,
So talk about, you know, some of the technologies that
they're hoping to implement in their companies.
Speaker 10 (35:52):
So a few weeks ago you had Chris Anderson from
the mass High Tech Council lot and it was very interesting.
He was talking about and the impact of AI on
the Commonwealth and on companies here, etc. AI was very
prevalent down there. So what we saw down there is
a combination of sensors to detect things and AI used
(36:14):
to make it much easier. So, for example, there's about
eighty million cameras in the US used by municipalities and
companies to do a whole host of different things. A
lot of times those cameras are up on a screen,
or they're being recorded in case something happens after the
fact and they can go back to them. AI is
now becoming very effective and in real time looking at
(36:36):
those camera feeds and deciding if somebody isn't a place
where they shouldn't be, for example, they're over fund fence line,
or if somebody is openly carrying a firearm brandishing it
and using that to detect and provide them time and
distance for the security people to be able to see that.
Another example we see down there to AI is for
(36:56):
bag X ray systems. So we're all familiar with the
bag X ray systems in the airport. They've been around
essentially since about nineteen seventy two, but they require a
trained operator who knows what an X ray image looks
like and if there is a potential thread or weapon
in there versus phones and computers and everything else that's
typically in a bag. Now AI can look at that
(37:20):
image and be much smarter at pointing out if the
operator should look at it. So instead of every single
bag getting looked at by the operator, now maybe it's two, three, four,
five percent of the bags which are more likely to
have a threat, and so these are two really good
examples of AI that is augmenting the security teams and
(37:40):
letting them focus on what people do best, which is
is there something here I need to look at more closely,
or not not looking at every single person manually or
every single bag manually.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
You know, it just seems so sophisticated. Is this frightening
for some of these or daunting for some of these companies?
Speaker 10 (37:57):
I think AI has been the term has been used lot.
There's a lot of different applications for it out there,
some good and some of concern. But when we talk
to the companies out there, if it's being used in
a very focused way with guardrails around it to help
them protect their employees, keep their facilities safe, it's essentially
(38:18):
like a force multiplier for their security staff. Security professionals
in the US so private security staff turns over about
three times a year, meaning the entire industry, So by
and large, there are a lot of new or inexperienced
security people out there. They tend not to always have
as much training. There certainly are experienced folks as well,
(38:39):
But to give this broad set of security professionals more
tools to help them do their job is something I
think we should all be appreciative of I.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Neil Chikara is my guest this morning. He is the
co founder of Evolved Technologies, and we're talking about this
big trade show that just took place down in New
Orleans related to security. A lot of business is there.
You know, let me go back for just a second
and if I could, I know, we sort of said
this off the topic. Who are the people who are
at these trade shows and who would this kind of
(39:12):
technology apply to?
Speaker 10 (39:14):
So there is a range of different types of companies
and organizations. So there are companies like we have in
Massachusetts here downtown or in the suburbs. There's financial services companies,
pharmaceutical companies, manufacturing companies, service companies, municipalities that are there,
whether it's at state or local level, that are at
(39:34):
the trade show. And the people that are there are
typically either the heads of security, so people that are
responsible for an overall security plan, what different approaches and
technologies am I going to put in place over this year,
next year, the year after, or people that are more
focused on day to day, how am I going to
make sure that everybody coming into this stadium or everybody
(39:54):
coming into my office building is safe? They're not hiring
a weapon if they're not supposed to carry a weapon.
It's a range of people, and the show itself provides
lots of different technologies and service providers, so it's a
it's like them all frankly, but you get to see
a lot of different innovations and also talk to your
peers and understand what other people are doing.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Fascinating, really fascinating. So when businesses go and they take
all of this in, what are some of the things
that they need to consider, you know, when when looking
at their specific business and their specific needs as it
relates to all of this technology.
Speaker 10 (40:32):
So there's no there's no one, one stop fits everybody,
one size fits all model here. So the first thing
to do is to think about mitigating or reducing risk,
not eliminating it. So risk cannot be eliminated, but it
can be reduced and there's ways to do that. And
whether it's a bar or a nightclub in Worcester, or
(40:53):
it's a large facility in downtown Boston or some someplace
even further out in the state, they need to understand
what it means for them. So what that is is
for their location, what are the potential threats coming in.
Are there certain people, are there certain weapons? Are there
certain events that increase those threats? What are the vulnerabilities,
what are the gaps in what they're trying to do
(41:13):
to protect and address those threats, and then what are
the approaches they can do to mitigate those risks. And
it's different for different places, and we see this in
schools as well as in venues. In some cases, they
need to make sure they have locks on the doors,
In some cases they need to make sure they just
have cameras focused on the areas that are of concern,
and in some they want to put other things in place,
(41:34):
like weapons detection and weapon screening, So they need to
have that complete picture, and them's resources available that can
help them as well.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Sure you know, and l you talked right off the
top that you were very surprised when you attended this
year's event because it's really about weapons detection, and unfortunately
it's a reality in our world, is it not?
Speaker 8 (41:59):
It is?
Speaker 10 (42:00):
Gun violence continues to be an epidemic in this country.
If we look about look at the numbers. We use
the Gun Violence Archive, which is a good source of information.
Through September, there were three hundred and forty one mass
shootings three hundred and forty one mass shootings more than
one a day. In a mass shooting, by their definition,
it's for people killed or injured other than the shooter.
(42:22):
And if we just look at some of these specific events.
In September, there was the church in Michigan where a
person rammed the church, went in and shot and killed
people and then set at a fire. There was a
shooting in North Carolina where somebody on a boat pulls
up to a bar waterfront bar and shoots into the bar.
(42:42):
There was a shooting in a casino parking lot. So
there's a wide range, unfortunately, of places and scenarios and
times when this gun violence is happening.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah, it seems almost impossible that any kind of safety
protection can protect dust from all of these incidents.
Speaker 10 (43:02):
It really is a series of layers of security. I mean,
some people call it lining out the Swiss cheese. So
no one security technology or approach is one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
But if you have a.
Speaker 10 (43:14):
Series of these layers as a whole, they can provide protection.
And as I mentioned earlier, it's not about eliminating risk.
It's really about reducing or mitigating the risk. And those
risks that are either most likely to happen or if
they do happen, have the biggest negative impact on the
organization run on the facility.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Nil fascinating information. Thank you so much for bringing it
to us. We very much appreciate it. All right, still,
come in your way. We'll speak to a doctor whose
life mission is to find the cause of breast cancer.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
You are listening to the New England Business Report on
the Voice of Boston WRKO six 't eighty. Joe and
Kim will be right back.
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Speaker 2 (46:05):
Hi everybody, I'm Kim Kerrigan.
Speaker 7 (46:07):
And I'm Joe Shortsleeve. If you want to be part
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Speaker 2 (46:41):
Want to welcome everybody back to the New England Business Report.
Great to have everyone with us this morning. Joe Shortsleeve
has the day off and so I'm Kim Kerrigan here
with you for the entire hour. October is Roust Cancer
Awareness Month. I think a lot of people may be
aware of that, and I think we all know that
treatment it has advanced pretty dramatically over the last few,
(47:06):
you know, years and decades, and that has been terrific
and battling for us cancer has gotten better and better
for very many women, but unfortunately there are still those
cases that are very difficult. And you know, my logic
tells me, wouldn't it be great if we just didn't
have to battle at all? Wouldn't it be great if
(47:27):
we could find the cause. Well, there's an organization out there,
a foundation called Find the Cause Foundation, which is trying
to do just that, and I am happy this morning
to have joining me one of the researchers who works
with the foundation. He is also a professor emeritus at
Boston University Department of Health. It's great to have doctor
(47:50):
David share with me this morning, So thank you so
much for being a part of the show. You and
I have chatted before, and I go back to the
same idea. You know, this concept seems so logical. Let's
just find the cause and then we won't have to
worry about treatment, we won't have to worry about continued battle.
But that's not such an easy thing.
Speaker 8 (48:10):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 9 (48:10):
Thanks very much Kim for having me. Yeah, it's not
such an easy thing.
Speaker 11 (48:14):
It's a little bit of.
Speaker 9 (48:14):
A more difficult selve than producing a drug. You know,
when you produce a drug, you can point to people
and say, well, I just saved your life. So it's
kind of sexy. For prevention, you have to believe in
the number of people that you saved. You don't really
see them. It's kind of a statistic, but it's even
more important, as you say, there's no reason that people
(48:36):
have to come back from their doctors to tell their
family just what I have cancer, go through the treatments,
the whole life turns upside down. There's ways to prevent
all that.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
So let's talk about ways to prevent it. This is
what you're doing every day in lab. And I know
that one of the directions that you and your fellow
researchers have directed have started down this path being the
environment and some of the things that are in our environment.
Talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 9 (49:05):
Yeah, sure, So you know, if I were to randomly
bleed any person, I would find dozens of chemicals in
their blood. The EPAS registered eighty six thousand chemicals that
are used in industry, and only about two and a
half percent of those have actually been tested to see
if they are carcinogenic. So we don't take dest quite enough.
(49:26):
That leaves a lot of unknowns and what we're doing
at Find the Cause Breast Cancer Foundation is a couple
of First, what we call primary prevention, which is trying
to identify which of the environmental chemicals that were exposed
to are really the bad guys. We're trying to make
up the difference from that two and a half percent
testing to way more, maybe up to one hundred percent.
(49:48):
And then there's this secondary prevention, which is to develop
ways to predict when someone is at high risk and
likely to get cancer. Now, this doesn't mean early detection.
Early detection means you find some small tumor, you think
it's small, that's already about a billion cells, and then
you work from there, which is great. We want to
be able to find some molecular changes that happen even
(50:12):
before there's any cancer cells and to try to intervene
at that point to intercept the cancer. And that's what
we refer to as secondary prevention.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Now, you know, doctor, I probably should have started by
asking you to tell us. I know there's a statistic
out there that you can probably share how many cancer,
and most specifically breast cancer diagnoses come about and there
is no family history. You know, there's there was no
warning signs if you will.
Speaker 9 (50:41):
Yeah, that's a great question. And somewhere between five and
ten percent don't have any aren't connected to any family history,
so not connected to a gene that you inherited. And
the best that we can determine about eighty to eighty
five percent of all cancers are caused by some extrinsic factor,
and one of those factors would be some of these
environmental chemicals.
Speaker 8 (51:01):
And that also means that the bad.
Speaker 9 (51:02):
News in one sense because we're exposed good news in
the sense that maybe eighty to eighty five percent of
all cancers are preventable, no need to go through the treatment.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
But when you talk about eighty six thousand chemicals that
are out there in the world, it is impossible. It
seems to me that all of those can be researched
and all of those can be approved or not approved.
Speaker 9 (51:24):
Yeah, I mean, it feels like an overwhelming task, but
the technology now exists to be able to do it
if the will is there and the funding is there.
That's part of the reason finding that causes is existing.
You know, the old test for whether something with the
cars engine costs five to ten million dollars for a
chemical and involves two years of tests and animals. But
(51:44):
we've now started looking at some of the characteristic changes
that you see in cancer in a test to and
using some high troops of technology with robots to handle
the material. We think we can go through thousands of
them at times and picked out the ones that are
most likely to be the cancer causing agents that if necessary,
(52:04):
to go and test them in the in the goal
of standard test. But I think the technology is going
to allow us to do that kind of thing, be
able to screen that many chemicals.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Doctor, you talked about it. You said that you know,
this is unfortunately probably going to come down to an
issue of funding in the environment that we live in now,
where funding is being pulled away or pushed or you know,
some of it's being recirculated to other locations. Tell me
(52:34):
about funding for this kind of research, where you get
it and what it looks like right now.
Speaker 9 (52:40):
Yeah, sure, so, I mean, historically it's been the NIH
and private foundations like find the Cause. They have been
the main financial drivers of the cancer research. And the
result of that is that ninety nine percent of all
new drugs approved by the FDA have received some sort
of funding or based on or generated with some sort
of funding from the NIA from private foundations. The good
(53:03):
news I suppose there is that for every dollar that's
spent on cancer research is one hundred and fifty percent
return on the investment, so you get back a dollar
more than a dollar fifty. So it really makes a
lot of sense in general to support this center work
both for economic and our physical health. The bad news
(53:24):
is that of the money that goes into the cancer
research historic, but it's only been five percent of it
directed towards prevention, despite us all knowing has been Franklin
said the announce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
And recently the White House has proposed of forty percent
cut in and ANIH funding, and it's already cut four
(53:46):
and a half billion dollars, and that's on top of
really a flat budget over the last twenty years or so.
So it's becoming harder and harder for people to do
the kind of research. Without the support of private foundations
to make up some of the difference, the work on
prevention would all all but disappear. So now the onus
(54:07):
is really on individual investment in foundations like Find the Cause.
I can tell you without that there would be a
lot of graduate students of studying for their PhD or
MD that are just let out in the call. Their
NIH granting grant funds have been pulled out from under them.
(54:27):
So the money that we have is Find the Cause
is now going towards basically rescuing those students and they
are now continuing on doing their work on breast cancer prevention.
That would also include mds and PhDs who recently receive
their degrees are now able to continue their work. And
it also means that the scientists within the Find the
Cause Breast Cancer foundations are able to continue to study
(54:51):
prevention and take high take risks so that they can
make bigger leaps rather than just incremental increases in their
ow understanding of how to prevent breast cancer. So it's
really quite a challenging environment.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
Right now, absolutely, And I'm going to share with our
listeners a way that they can get involved here in
just a few minutes. But before I do, so, you know,
we're talking about breast cancer. But if we can find
the cause of breast cancer, that certainly is going to
lead to finding causes for other kinds of cancers as well.
Speaker 9 (55:23):
Correct, Yeah, that's absolutely right on two levels. Well, the
first is that these environmental chemicals are not just breast
cancer specific. They do in other kinds of cancers, right.
And the second level is that what we're learning is
that part of the reason why people get breast cancer
is because the environmental chemicals suppressed the immune system, and
(55:43):
the immune system is critical to preventing all kinds of cancers.
Without the immune system, you would get all kinds of cancers.
So you're absolutely right one percent that everything we learn
about breast cancer prevention is can all be also be
attributed to brain cancers and lung cancers and liver cancers
and all the others.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
Doctor one final question from me, will a cause be
found in our lifetime?
Speaker 8 (56:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (56:08):
I think that's not an unreasonable assumption. I mean, we
will identify more of the chemicals that are inducing these
cancers and figure out ways to eliminate them from our
everyday household use. And I think we'll be able to
find ways to predict when people who are going to
get cancer way before they do, and then to try
to intercept that at some point, and it'll just be
like all It'll be like a vaccination of some kind
(56:31):
where you just forget about it, you treat it and
then you're done.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Well I hope that is the case. I know you're
doing some incredible work, doctor David Sharri. Thank you so
much and continued successor Now, I just want to let
everyone know that Find the Cost Foundation is having its
annual Prevention Party. It's coming up this Wednesday at the
Omni Saport Hotel. So please to serve as their Master
of Ceremonies for the second year. And if you are
(56:55):
interested you'd like more information about the foundation or about
the event, you can go to Find the Cause BCF
dot org. Well that's going to do it for this
edition of the New England Business Report. Let's take a
look at what's coming up next week. You know the
tower at South Station. They've been talking about it forever,
(57:17):
working on it forever, and believe it or not, we're
seeing signs of the doors opening. We're going to speak
to a representative of the development company about the project
and where it stands at this point. That's all coming
up on the New England Business Report next Sunday at
eight am right here on the Voice of Boston WRKO
AM six eighty
This is the New England Business Report with Joe short
Sleeve and Kim Carrigan, a weekly roundup and discussion of
the top business news impacting our New England economy.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the New England Business
Report on this Sunday, October the twelfth. It is so
great to have you along. I'm Kim Carrigan and Joe Shortsleeve.
Has the week off, of course, another very busy week
in the world of business. We have a continuing government
shut down and we'll have some interviews this morning that
(00:31):
reflect the business sentiment about that. Lots of good things
come in your way here on the New England Business
Report this morning, so let's take a look at what
some of those might be. As I mentioned that government shutdown,
which certainly has an impact on the story that our
next first guest rather is going to be bringing us.
Christopher Geehearn is the executive vice president to Public Affairs
(00:54):
and Communications at the Associated Industries of Massachusetts. We all
know that as aim. Unfortunately, last month's Business Confidence Index
in the Bay State showed that business leaders are getting
more and more pessimistic about the economy, and this has
been a trend for the last few months. Chris is
going to join us to talk a little bit more
(01:15):
about why he believes that trend is continuing, what he's
hearing from business leaders, and what business leaders are thinking
about when we talked about this shutdown of the federal government.
Donzeiffert will be our guest, the managing editor or the
Boston Business Journal. He's got a number of stories he
wants to talk about, including a big sale that's going on.
(01:35):
Here's a clean energy company that's been here in the
city for the last fifteen years. They actually produce batteries,
and apparently they are closing down shop and there's a
few things they're going to be selling. So he's going
to share that story. Market basket saga just continues to
go on. We had yet another firing this past week,
(01:56):
of course, a loyalist to RDT, so on, we'll share
that story. And if you're a woman in the state
and you're interested in going to one of our all
women's colleges, you just might be able to go for free.
That's right, I said free. So he's going to explain that. Okay,
now I know that I told you off the top
that it's October twelfth, and so we haven't even gotten
(02:17):
to Halloween, but believe it or not, predictions for the
upcoming holiday season spending already starting to surface. Simon Kuach Sure.
They are a global pricing consultancy and they have an
office here in Boston. They have conducted their annual holiday
shopping report. And I know this may be shocking to you,
but Black Friday is less than six weeks away and predictions,
(02:42):
believe it or not, for retailers. Even though business leaders
are pessimistic about the economy, apparently consumers are not, because
the predictions look pretty darn good. So we're going to
be chatting about that. Also this morning, more and more
businesses are expanding or considering more security measures to protect
their employees and their customers. I don't think that's a
surprise probably to any of us. We're going to have
(03:05):
a discussion with a co founder of All Technologies about
a recent trade show that really brought to light some
of the safety concert plaguing some of these business owners
today and how a lot of them want to go
about addressing it again. Their number one goal in so
many cases is to make sure first and foremost that
their employees are safe, and then of course, that their
(03:26):
customers are safe as well, So we are going to
have a conversation about that. I have a feeling that
may ring true for a lot of our listeners who
are business owners out there. October is Breast cancer Awareness month.
Many of us have either had or know someone who
has battle breast cancer, no two ways about that. And
while so many advances have come to light when it
(03:49):
comes to treatment, which is terrific, wouldn't it be great
if the research community could find the cause and we
could prevent it and then we wouldn't have to worry
about all of those treatments. Well, I have to tell
you there is a foundation out there that is attempting
to do just that. It's called Find the Cause, and
(04:10):
they have researchers, world renowned researchers who dedicate their entire
lives at this point to just trying to find the
cause for breast cancer, which ultimately would lead to finding
the cause to other kinds of cancers. But you know,
getting funding for this kind of thing and the environment
that we are in right now can be very difficult.
(04:33):
So we're going to talk to one of those wonderful
researchers find out where they stand when it comes to
trying to find a cause to breast cancer and then
find out what their experience is like. Right now when
it comes to funding again, it's a difficult climate for funding.
And we're going to chat with that really incredible researcher.
And by the way, when you hear some of the
(04:54):
things that they are learning about our environment and why
that may be causing breast cancer, I think you're going
to be really surprised. So a great show coming your
way this morning, and we're so glad that you're with us.
But first this morning, I've said this before and I'm
going to say it again. I have to tell you
uncertainty in my estimation, may be the best word to
(05:15):
describe twenty twenty five when it comes to the economy.
I mean, the economy is showing signs of progress. It is,
but at a slow pace. There are tariffs and possible
interest rate cuts, and now, of course we've got a
government shut down that's left business owners very shaky. Joining
us to talk about the September Business Confidence Index. Is
(05:36):
the executive vice president of Public Affairs and Communications at
the Associated Industries of Massachusetts. We all know it as AIM.
This is Chris Garon, Chris, great to have you.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Along, Great to be here, Kim.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
You think that do you agree with me? You certainly
don't have to. Is uncertainty. You think, when it's all
said and done, you know, on the thirty first of December,
when we look back at the year, do you think
we're going to all say that was the word of the.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I think so it's a word we hear more often
than any other word as we're talking to our thirty
four hundred member companies throughout the year, and it's what
we're seeing with the Business Confidence Index. It's an interesting
dichotomy that we see and that employers have been, you know,
(06:21):
slightly pessimistic in their outlooks for seven months now, even
though the underlying fundamentals of the economy look pretty good.
And the difference, the reason for that split is uncertainty.
They are uncertain about tariffs, they're uncertain about inflation, they're
(06:43):
uncertain about federal support and mass research companies. They're uncertain
about the cost of doing business, and they're uncertain about
AI and other technologies that are changing the market pretty quickly.
So that's a pretty heaping bowl of uncertainty. So your
thought is absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, well, let's talk about the September numbers first, and
then we can back up a bit and take a
look at how they compare to what's been happening. You
said seven month trend, right, is that the longest trend
you've seen like this a downward slip or the longest
one in a while.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Is the it's the longest trend of pessimism since twenty
twenty for obvious reasons. Then with the pandemic, then we
saw pessimism from March twenty twenty all the way to
the end of the year. But this is the longest
longest time in pessimistic territory since then.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
So let's talk about September. Tell us what did the
numbers look like.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
So in September, the Business Confidence Index fell one point
five points to forty seven point five. We measure confidence
on a one hundred point scale, and anything above fifty
we consider generally optimistic. Anything below fifty is pessimistic. So
(08:03):
those numbers again pessimistic, Yes, wildly pessimistic. No, it's kind
of hanging right around that midpoint. The other interesting thing
about September was it was five point seven points less
than it was during the same month a year ago,
so we have lost ground. Interestingly enough, however, amid the
(08:29):
general pessimism, the employment index, which is one element of
what we measure, rose three point one point and was
actually an optimistic territory. So amid all the uncertainty, amid
all the kind of red flags that they're looking at,
these employers are still still hiring people, are still looking
(08:52):
to hire people. So that's a good sign.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Well, yeah, that is, and that's actually very surprising. I
think it's interesting. Also, I was reading that the US
data shows that September numbers came in stronger than were anticipated,
you know, when it comes to the economy. So it's
interesting that overall, as we have both mentioned already, you know,
the economy is kind of sneaky doing okay, and yet
(09:20):
these businesses are not feeling so great about it.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And that's the interesting part about the numbers. So so
Massachusetts during the second quarter grew at four and a
half percent, which is at a pretty brisk pace, very respectable,
and the country as a whole grew at three point
eight percent. You know, no question that the employment market
(09:44):
is slowing down. So payroll jobs actually went down here
in Massachusetts, during August, unemployment rate is you know, state
steady at four point eight percent, So if you look
at all the underlying numbers, fairly good news. But again,
the disconnect that employers are seeing is they just don't
(10:08):
know what's going to happen. And one of the you know,
we allow our members who take this survey to give
us a free, free answer about anything that's on their mind,
and one of them said, you know, until we know
how the tariffs are going to be applied in the amount,
our customers have largely stopped buying. So I think that's
(10:29):
that's playing into it significantly in terms of the overall confidence, which.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Is a scary thing as we go into this fourth quarter.
We don't want to see that for certain this barometer
was taken. You spoke to your members prior to the
government shut down. What kind of ramifications might the government
shut down now have on business confidence in the state.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Well, it's certainly not going to help. And there are
two factors to that. One is, if you look at
the September numbers, the worst performing elements were how employers
viewed both the state and the national economy. So to
the extent that they lose confidence in the ability of
(11:10):
our government to in fact govern and do what it's
supposed to do. That's that's not going to help matters.
The other element is that a lot of companies in
Massachusetts to deal with the federal government. You know, we
have a lot of defense contractors, we have a lot
of research and development type of companies. So anything that
impedes those types of economic relationships is not going to
(11:33):
be helpful either.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And Chris, finally, when business owners have low confidence, how
does impact the local economy?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Well, I think going back to the comment that we
just went over, which is the company that said, you know,
our customers have largely stopped buying. That's what's happening. So
if employers, you know, confident employers invest in their business,
is they develop new markets, they hire people, perhaps most importantly,
(12:05):
maybe they put a new addition on their plant. So
all of that reflects the confidence that the employer, the owner,
the business owner has in the future. Conversely, employers who
are not confident or have some concerns about the economy
(12:27):
tend to hold their cards close to the vest. Maybe
they put off the expansion, maybe they don't hire those
extra five people that you know, maybe they would like
to maybe maybe with all the tariff uncertainty, they don't
explore a new market, say in Asia or some other place.
So lack of confidence equates to kind of holding steady,
(12:50):
and it does affect economic growth.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I know, I said last question, but I've got one
more for you.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
That's all right, let's get away.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
What do you anticipate this next month? Will we see
this go into an eighth month or you might it
pick up.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I've larned long ago not to try and predict too much.
In fact, we just had our economic outlook, and Rick
MacDonald from JP Morgan Chase said that twenty twenty five
is the year we all guessed wrong. So at the
risk of guessing wrong again, I think probably this trend
(13:26):
is going to continue unless until a lot of the
political uncertainty and the tariff uncertainty gets settled down. That's
really the big fly anyway.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Well, it sounds like we circled right back to where
we started, and that's the word uncertainty, which seems to
be prevalent certainly in these economic times. Chris, thanks so
much for being a part of the show. Really appreciated
coming up next to the managing editor of the Boston
Business Journal. Don Zeiffert will be our guest. This is
the New England Business Report.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
You are listening to the New England Business Report on
the Voice of Boston w RKO six 't eighty. Joe
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Back a little.
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Speaker 2 (16:21):
Hi everybody, I'm Kim Kerrigan.
Speaker 7 (16:23):
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Speaker 2 (16:49):
Welcome back to everybody, so good to have you with
us this morning. Joe Shortsleeve has the day off. At
this time of the show, we'd like to take a
look at some of the business headlines from the past week.
Joining us as the managing editor of the Boston Business
Journal to talk about that. Don Seifert is with us. Don,
good to have you along.
Speaker 8 (17:08):
Thanks, Kim.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Been a busy, busy times. Huh, yes, yeah, everybody keeping busy.
Let's look at some of the stories that sort of
stood out this week. The first one that you have
shared with me as a story about a clean energy
company that's been here in the Boston area for the
last fifteen years and now they are closing up shop.
Why didn't you explain?
Speaker 8 (17:30):
Yeah, the company's name is Ambry They and as I said,
it's been for fifteen years. I think it was founded
in twenty ten, was given initial funding by Bill Gates
among other people. And actually at the very end, Bill
Gates was still one of the largest shareholders in the company.
Their core product that they were trying to develop, that
(17:51):
they had developed was a kind of battery. It was
a liquid what they call a liquid metal battery. This
was going to replace you lithium ion batteries, which are
kind of the current state of the art. And uh,
and they've been working on on creating this. They had
a number of number of people, you know, businesses that
(18:13):
were committed to buying them. Their whole problem was they
were never able to raise the money to build a
factory to actually make these you know at scale.
Speaker 9 (18:21):
Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And I think I read that as a result, you know,
they're going to actually sell their intellectual property.
Speaker 8 (18:30):
Yeah, which hopefully that means that the that the technology
will still exist in some form. But yeah, I don't
understand how it works. But somehow, you know this it's
referred to as liquid metal battery. So uh, you know,
I mean, mass just as the whole has been there
has been a hub for clean energy, as everybody knows
I think at this point, and battery development has been
(18:53):
a big part of that. I mean, obviously the battery
development in order to make solar and wind energy more
sustainable and throughout the day and night and uh and
so Ambry was really working on that, uh for a
long time. But I mean it's uh, this uh, this
inability to to build a factory, to get money to
build a factory, kind of reminds me of a story
(19:15):
we talked about, I think a week or two ago
about Sublime Sublime Systems making uh, carbon free concrete, also
not being able to build a uh. You know, they
got their federal funding taken away. So I think that
these I mean, there's no indication that this one had
anything to do with federal cutbacks. I think their problems
started a couple of years ago, so, you know, predating Trump.
(19:37):
But but still it's been kind of hard times for
crean energy companies, I think battery energy in particular.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, it's it's not a good sign, that's for sure.
I guess the hope is that if they can sell
the intellectual property. I know they're selling all their lab equipment.
There's you know, it's a it's a huge sale, right,
But if they can sell that that maybe somebody else
who can find those funds can and continue that that project.
Speaker 8 (20:02):
Yeah, one of the original investors of French energy company
called Total Essay or I guess now it's called Total Energies. Uh,
maybe they would want to buy it, right, sure they
were also uh they were also supported by a company
called Reliance New Energy Solars. So no, I mean I
could see another clean energy company hopefully buying the IP
(20:23):
and making it work.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Sure, absolutely, you know, maybe you already have some facilities
on that exist. Let's change gears here a bit. It
looks like another one bites the dust over there at
market basket. Man. I I have a feeling there's not
a soul in the building.
Speaker 10 (20:39):
Another another firing, the story that never ends.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 8 (20:45):
So so yeah, uh, this one came out a little
earlier this week, and it turns out that a long
time finance officer in the company was fire. It was
interesting it came out, Uh it was it was kind
of a press release just kind of came out of nowhere,
you know. Obviously this comes a couple of weeks after
the CEO uh rtt Arthur T. De Mulis was fired.
(21:09):
So uh, this just came out of the blue, and
we got a press release, you know, kind of from
the PR company that had worked with RTT in the past,
and you know, it just said that this woman use
named Sue de Fresny was was fired, and you know
that that she had and that the reason the company
had given was that she she kind of spoke out
(21:32):
a turn, spoke to the press. She spoke in favor,
you know, in support of RTT as the CEO questioned
the board's actions and firing him and putting him on
leaves in the first place. So then you know, she'd
been there for for decades. Now she's gone as well.
The company did confirm that they had fired her. They said, uh,
(21:52):
let's say that she said that the board had engaged
in wise pretexts and false investigations. They said that she
had disclosed confidential company information and also said that she
was giving untrue negative public statements. It so obviously no
love lost between no exactly executive.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
You know, it's so interesting, don because there had been,
you know, so many people who had been at that
company for a long long time, so obviously they were
supporters of rdt's It just feels like, you know, this
is going to be a systematic unfolding and unwinding of
all the people who have been there for any period
of time, because I would assume most of them are loyal,
(22:36):
were loyal to him.
Speaker 8 (22:37):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean the whole company, the
company's culture as a whole was really built around RTT.
I mean absolutely, you know that employees loved I mean
over the summer. We you know, we already reported that
in July, a couple of other longtime executives were fired.
They were put on leave at the same time as Art.
The RTT was way back in late May, and they
(22:57):
were finally just fired, and they had spoken out about
it and said that, you know, and they also questioned
the board's motives and getting rid of RDT. So it
does seem like they are going through and a lot
of the top leadership that supported RDT are being targeted
right now.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Absolutely. Story in the Boston Business Journal this week about
the fact that certain families could possibly get free tuition
for their daughters if they're interested in going to some
of the women's colleges here in this day. What's going
on there?
Speaker 8 (23:30):
Yeah, Smith's College in Northampton. It's a private school, it's
not very big, but they made their tuition free for
I think, yeah, families with annual incomes of less than
fifty thousand dollars. And it's interesting just because they I mean,
there have been several colleges that have done this recently,
so Smith College is just the most recent. But it
(23:52):
just follows a state. You know, this has really kind
of been a trend in the whole higher ed system
for a while. We now have I think Harvard and
MIT both are Harvard free are excuse me, tuition free
for some students. University of Massachusetts I think they cover
tuition for students make less than seventy five thousand a year,
(24:15):
and other other schools across the country, and you know,
in Massachusetts, this kind of all arguably started with Healey's
plan to make the community colleges free for anybody who
wanted to attend one, which I think is now a
couple of years old. That was back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Well, you know, I mean, these college tuitions have gotten
so out of control and the competition is so stiff
to get you know, students into different schools. I can
see where this is a way of survival.
Speaker 8 (24:43):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, these schools are
giving a great deal of of scholarships anyways to students
who you know, to to these students of you know,
families who aren't making a whole lot of money, so
you can think that they're probably not actually losing a
whole lot of money to just say okay, tuition free,
I mean to And of course making tuition free that
(25:04):
doesn't cover room and board, doesn't cover books, does a
bunch of other stuff, so it still costs money to
go to these schools. You know, it kind of gives
them a bit of a marketing edge that they could say,
you know, we're tuition free for certain people, but you know,
they actually don't have to spend probably a whole lot
more money in order to accomplish it.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Absolutely, we're just about out of time here. Don very
quickly a mass biotech the only one to go public
this year. They actually grew their head camp by seventy
one percent. We were just talking off air, my producer
and I were about a lot of these biotechs, laying
people off. What's going on here.
Speaker 8 (25:41):
Yeah, In past years, we've had multiple biotechs go public.
You know, We've had years with like ten to fifteen
biotechs all the masters to go public. This year we've
had exactly one. It was in February, kind of right
before the tariffs kind of spook the stock markets. And
the name of it is COO Seona Therapeutics. They're working
(26:01):
on cystic fibrosis drugs. So they they pulled off the
only IPO of the year. They raise two hundred and
nineteen million, which is which is pretty good. You know,
anything over two hundred million, I think is pretty decent.
And it turns out they've they've kind of benefited from it.
They came into the year with thirty five people working
for them. They now have about sixty. You know, their
(26:24):
drugs are probably still a ways off from being approved.
I think they're waiting for mid stage trial results next year.
You know Ciona Therapeutics that's based in Waltham, and they
look like they're doing pretty good. So hopefully we'll see
some more IPOs in the in the near future.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Absolutely, he's done, zeiphered, Thank you so much for joining us.
Always interesting still come in your way. You're starting to
think about your holiday shopping. The predictions on what you're
going to spend are out and we're going to share
those with you when we come back right here on
the New England Business Report, Kim and.
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Are you a brother or sister of one of Greater
Boston's local trade unions and finally thinking about getting ready
to hang up your tools after thirty five years of
working your tailoff. Congratulations, you worked hard to build your
retirement nest egg. But now what Let me help you
break through the nonsense and financial speak so we can
get to the questions that are important to you. As
you know, nothing gets built without a set of plans,
(28:25):
and neither will your financial future. My name is Mike Marshall,
President and CEO of Marshall Wealth Management and creator of
the Marshall Plan, a comprehensive customized plan that will help
you answer important questions in all seven key areas. You
don't have to do it alone. There is no cost
or obligation. Call us at eight five seven three four
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Advisory services offer through Capital Analysts or LINCL Investment Registered
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Speaker 2 (29:08):
Welcome back everyone. This is the New England Business Report.
Of course, now I know that you just put out
your moms and your pumpkins, but believe it or not,
Black Friday, it's just more than six weeks away, and
many organized shoppers, I'm not one of them, but many
of them out there are already starting to hunt for
those holiday sales. I'm joined by Sheika Jane. She is
(29:30):
the lead partner at Simon Kutcher, a global pricing consultancy.
She's based here in Boston and they do annually their
Holiday Shopping Report. They've just done their seventh report, and
it's so great to have you with us. Sheika. It
is so hard to believe that people are already starting
to think about the holiday thing. I mean, I feel
(29:52):
like it was just fourth of July, but it is
that time of year.
Speaker 11 (29:55):
I can't believe it is that time of your either, Kim,
and you know what's crazy. I know you talked about
how folks are already getting ready. I would actually say
that when it comes to holiday shopping, it is going
to happen.
Speaker 9 (30:07):
Sooner and sooner.
Speaker 11 (30:08):
And we're seeing that already with Amazon Prime Day and
Walmart and just a lot of the ads focus on
the holidays, so every year they just get pulled sooner
and sooner. What can we do?
Speaker 2 (30:21):
It's amazing. Yeah, it's the holiday creep for sure. So
talk to us a little bit about what the annual
report found out this year.
Speaker 11 (30:28):
Yeah, So this study has been going on for seven
years and it uncovers how consumers around America plan, shop,
and spend during the important holiday shopping season. And the
reason it's so important to know that is because for
so many retailers, the last three months of the year
make up roughly forty percent of their annual revenues. So
(30:51):
the purpose of the study is to deliver meaningful insights
on consumer shopping behavior and to guide businesses because of
what I just mentioned. This year we focused on the
growing role of AI when it comes to the holidays,
the impact of terrorists they're everywhere, changing channel and dynamics,
and how consumer expectations have shifted over time.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
And tell me what you found out, because I would
anticipate that people are going to be a little tighter
with their wallets, but that's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 11 (31:22):
That is not true. I think that what tends to
happen in inflationary environments is that our anchors or our
baselines keep getting reset. So last year, we've you know,
when we ran this study, we said that, okay, what's
going to happen in terms of annual household spend and
actually compared to last year, we've already grown. So we're
(31:46):
anticipating roughly six percent increase in the average household spending,
which translates to roughly one thousand and eighty dollars when
it comes to how they how much they'll spend on
the holidays. So that's one interesting insight. Of course, as
you can imagine that there is this is not uniform
across income levels. Obviously the higher income levels will spend
(32:10):
a lot more than lower income levels, and the number
I gave you was more the average for the entire year.
And also what's going to happen is that consumers are
going to spend across a huge variety of categories, for sure,
but younger people are going to spend more on things
like trips and experiences versus you know, physical products and
(32:32):
so on. There's still going to be spent towards non
essential items more and more and more. And the other
interesting thing that we've been finding and has just been
a trend is that Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue
to provide the best field, but participation in them has
(32:54):
been on a steady decline, on a single digit decline
over the last few years. Friday, for example, is expected
to be down seven percent in terms of folks that
will participate compared to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 10 (33:07):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Really interesting. Yeah, well, people have other means by which
to shop and longer periods to do that. I I unfortunately,
we don't have a ton of time this morning. Let
me ask you this. I thought this was so interesting.
We have a younger set who's going to rely on
AI to tell them where the best deals are.
Speaker 11 (33:24):
That's right. AI is becoming mainstream and it's becoming a
mainstream shopping tool. There's still going to be some trust issues,
but we are going to use it in order to
figure out how to gift, you know, figure out our
shopping lists and gifts for others, finding the best available price,
tracking deals and alerts, you know, summarizing product reviews to
(33:46):
make decision making faster, personalizing gifts and so on, or
just to get information and chatting with an AI assistant.
So it's going to be everywhere, and I think it's
just going to be something everyone uses. It's not just
the younger. It's going to be a cross generation.
Speaker 9 (34:03):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
The holidays moving into the future. Chika, thank you so
much for joining us today.
Speaker 7 (34:08):
All right.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
You know, businesses such as manufacturers and financial institutions, even
pharmaceutical companies, they're putting more and more emphasis on security.
Our next guest recently attended a large trade show or
security for these types of establishments was front and center.
So we're happy to have joining us the co founder
of Waltham based Evolved Technologies, that's of course a safety
(34:31):
detection company and they'll check Kara is with us and Nil.
It's great to have you, like always. First thing I'd
love for you to do is tell us a little
bit about this trade show. It's called GSX.
Speaker 10 (34:43):
It is so there's two major security trade shows, physical
security trade shows GSX and the fall and is another
one I in the spring, and there's about twenty thousand
people that go there. There's lots of different types of equipment,
service providers, all the people around the security ecosystem. And
(35:03):
this year was interesting. It was down in New Orleans.
Many years, there's a range of large companies, small companies,
partners that are there and a lot of times they're
looking at the latest in cameras or the latest in
access control and door locks or turnstiles, and this year
was different. It was noticeably different. There was a very
(35:24):
strong focus on weapons detection, and that focus was coming
from some of the largest companies there, so manufacturing companies
that we all know, pharmaceutical companies, banks, financial services companies.
And I think this is a result of some of
the events that we've seen over the last few months.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, I mean that must have been very surprising to you,
So talk about, you know, some of the technologies that
they're hoping to implement in their companies.
Speaker 10 (35:52):
So a few weeks ago you had Chris Anderson from
the mass High Tech Council lot and it was very interesting.
He was talking about and the impact of AI on
the Commonwealth and on companies here, etc. AI was very
prevalent down there. So what we saw down there is
a combination of sensors to detect things and AI used
(36:14):
to make it much easier. So, for example, there's about
eighty million cameras in the US used by municipalities and
companies to do a whole host of different things. A
lot of times those cameras are up on a screen,
or they're being recorded in case something happens after the
fact and they can go back to them. AI is
now becoming very effective and in real time looking at
(36:36):
those camera feeds and deciding if somebody isn't a place
where they shouldn't be, for example, they're over fund fence line,
or if somebody is openly carrying a firearm brandishing it
and using that to detect and provide them time and
distance for the security people to be able to see that.
Another example we see down there to AI is for
(36:56):
bag X ray systems. So we're all familiar with the
bag X ray systems in the airport. They've been around
essentially since about nineteen seventy two, but they require a
trained operator who knows what an X ray image looks
like and if there is a potential thread or weapon
in there versus phones and computers and everything else that's
typically in a bag. Now AI can look at that
(37:20):
image and be much smarter at pointing out if the
operator should look at it. So instead of every single
bag getting looked at by the operator, now maybe it's two, three, four,
five percent of the bags which are more likely to
have a threat, and so these are two really good
examples of AI that is augmenting the security teams and
(37:40):
letting them focus on what people do best, which is
is there something here I need to look at more closely,
or not not looking at every single person manually or
every single bag manually.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
You know, it just seems so sophisticated. Is this frightening
for some of these or daunting for some of these companies?
Speaker 10 (37:57):
I think AI has been the term has been used lot.
There's a lot of different applications for it out there,
some good and some of concern. But when we talk
to the companies out there, if it's being used in
a very focused way with guardrails around it to help
them protect their employees, keep their facilities safe, it's essentially
(38:18):
like a force multiplier for their security staff. Security professionals
in the US so private security staff turns over about
three times a year, meaning the entire industry, So by
and large, there are a lot of new or inexperienced
security people out there. They tend not to always have
as much training. There certainly are experienced folks as well,
(38:39):
But to give this broad set of security professionals more
tools to help them do their job is something I
think we should all be appreciative of I.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Neil Chikara is my guest this morning. He is the
co founder of Evolved Technologies, and we're talking about this
big trade show that just took place down in New
Orleans related to security. A lot of business is there.
You know, let me go back for just a second
and if I could, I know, we sort of said
this off the topic. Who are the people who are
at these trade shows and who would this kind of
(39:12):
technology apply to?
Speaker 10 (39:14):
So there is a range of different types of companies
and organizations. So there are companies like we have in
Massachusetts here downtown or in the suburbs. There's financial services companies,
pharmaceutical companies, manufacturing companies, service companies, municipalities that are there,
whether it's at state or local level, that are at
(39:34):
the trade show. And the people that are there are
typically either the heads of security, so people that are
responsible for an overall security plan, what different approaches and
technologies am I going to put in place over this year,
next year, the year after, or people that are more
focused on day to day, how am I going to
make sure that everybody coming into this stadium or everybody
(39:54):
coming into my office building is safe? They're not hiring
a weapon if they're not supposed to carry a weapon.
It's a range of people, and the show itself provides
lots of different technologies and service providers, so it's a
it's like them all frankly, but you get to see
a lot of different innovations and also talk to your
peers and understand what other people are doing.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Fascinating, really fascinating. So when businesses go and they take
all of this in, what are some of the things
that they need to consider, you know, when when looking
at their specific business and their specific needs as it
relates to all of this technology.
Speaker 10 (40:32):
So there's no there's no one, one stop fits everybody,
one size fits all model here. So the first thing
to do is to think about mitigating or reducing risk,
not eliminating it. So risk cannot be eliminated, but it
can be reduced and there's ways to do that. And
whether it's a bar or a nightclub in Worcester, or
(40:53):
it's a large facility in downtown Boston or some someplace
even further out in the state, they need to understand
what it means for them. So what that is is
for their location, what are the potential threats coming in.
Are there certain people, are there certain weapons? Are there
certain events that increase those threats? What are the vulnerabilities,
what are the gaps in what they're trying to do
(41:13):
to protect and address those threats, and then what are
the approaches they can do to mitigate those risks. And
it's different for different places, and we see this in
schools as well as in venues. In some cases, they
need to make sure they have locks on the doors,
In some cases they need to make sure they just
have cameras focused on the areas that are of concern,
and in some they want to put other things in place,
(41:34):
like weapons detection and weapon screening, So they need to
have that complete picture, and them's resources available that can
help them as well.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Sure you know, and l you talked right off the
top that you were very surprised when you attended this
year's event because it's really about weapons detection, and unfortunately
it's a reality in our world, is it not?
Speaker 8 (41:59):
It is?
Speaker 10 (42:00):
Gun violence continues to be an epidemic in this country.
If we look about look at the numbers. We use
the Gun Violence Archive, which is a good source of information.
Through September, there were three hundred and forty one mass
shootings three hundred and forty one mass shootings more than
one a day. In a mass shooting, by their definition,
it's for people killed or injured other than the shooter.
(42:22):
And if we just look at some of these specific events.
In September, there was the church in Michigan where a
person rammed the church, went in and shot and killed
people and then set at a fire. There was a
shooting in North Carolina where somebody on a boat pulls
up to a bar waterfront bar and shoots into the bar.
(42:42):
There was a shooting in a casino parking lot. So
there's a wide range, unfortunately, of places and scenarios and
times when this gun violence is happening.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah, it seems almost impossible that any kind of safety
protection can protect dust from all of these incidents.
Speaker 10 (43:02):
It really is a series of layers of security. I mean,
some people call it lining out the Swiss cheese. So
no one security technology or approach is one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
But if you have a.
Speaker 10 (43:14):
Series of these layers as a whole, they can provide protection.
And as I mentioned earlier, it's not about eliminating risk.
It's really about reducing or mitigating the risk. And those
risks that are either most likely to happen or if
they do happen, have the biggest negative impact on the
organization run on the facility.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Nil fascinating information. Thank you so much for bringing it
to us. We very much appreciate it. All right, still,
come in your way. We'll speak to a doctor whose
life mission is to find the cause of breast cancer.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
You are listening to the New England Business Report on
the Voice of Boston WRKO six 't eighty. Joe and
Kim will be right back.
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Speaker 2 (46:05):
Hi everybody, I'm Kim Kerrigan.
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Speaker 2 (46:41):
Want to welcome everybody back to the New England Business Report.
Great to have everyone with us this morning. Joe Shortsleeve
has the day off and so I'm Kim Kerrigan here
with you for the entire hour. October is Roust Cancer
Awareness Month. I think a lot of people may be
aware of that, and I think we all know that
treatment it has advanced pretty dramatically over the last few,
(47:06):
you know, years and decades, and that has been terrific
and battling for us cancer has gotten better and better
for very many women, but unfortunately there are still those
cases that are very difficult. And you know, my logic
tells me, wouldn't it be great if we just didn't
have to battle at all? Wouldn't it be great if
(47:27):
we could find the cause. Well, there's an organization out there,
a foundation called Find the Cause Foundation, which is trying
to do just that, and I am happy this morning
to have joining me one of the researchers who works
with the foundation. He is also a professor emeritus at
Boston University Department of Health. It's great to have doctor
(47:50):
David share with me this morning, So thank you so
much for being a part of the show. You and
I have chatted before, and I go back to the
same idea. You know, this concept seems so logical. Let's
just find the cause and then we won't have to
worry about treatment, we won't have to worry about continued battle.
But that's not such an easy thing.
Speaker 8 (48:10):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 9 (48:10):
Thanks very much Kim for having me. Yeah, it's not
such an easy thing.
Speaker 11 (48:14):
It's a little bit of.
Speaker 9 (48:14):
A more difficult selve than producing a drug. You know,
when you produce a drug, you can point to people
and say, well, I just saved your life. So it's
kind of sexy. For prevention, you have to believe in
the number of people that you saved. You don't really
see them. It's kind of a statistic, but it's even
more important, as you say, there's no reason that people
(48:36):
have to come back from their doctors to tell their
family just what I have cancer, go through the treatments,
the whole life turns upside down. There's ways to prevent
all that.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
So let's talk about ways to prevent it. This is
what you're doing every day in lab. And I know
that one of the directions that you and your fellow
researchers have directed have started down this path being the
environment and some of the things that are in our environment.
Talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 9 (49:05):
Yeah, sure, So you know, if I were to randomly
bleed any person, I would find dozens of chemicals in
their blood. The EPAS registered eighty six thousand chemicals that
are used in industry, and only about two and a
half percent of those have actually been tested to see
if they are carcinogenic. So we don't take dest quite enough.
(49:26):
That leaves a lot of unknowns and what we're doing
at Find the Cause Breast Cancer Foundation is a couple
of First, what we call primary prevention, which is trying
to identify which of the environmental chemicals that were exposed
to are really the bad guys. We're trying to make
up the difference from that two and a half percent
testing to way more, maybe up to one hundred percent.
(49:48):
And then there's this secondary prevention, which is to develop
ways to predict when someone is at high risk and
likely to get cancer. Now, this doesn't mean early detection.
Early detection means you find some small tumor, you think
it's small, that's already about a billion cells, and then
you work from there, which is great. We want to
be able to find some molecular changes that happen even
(50:12):
before there's any cancer cells and to try to intervene
at that point to intercept the cancer. And that's what
we refer to as secondary prevention.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Now, you know, doctor, I probably should have started by
asking you to tell us. I know there's a statistic
out there that you can probably share how many cancer,
and most specifically breast cancer diagnoses come about and there
is no family history. You know, there's there was no
warning signs if you will.
Speaker 9 (50:41):
Yeah, that's a great question. And somewhere between five and
ten percent don't have any aren't connected to any family history,
so not connected to a gene that you inherited. And
the best that we can determine about eighty to eighty
five percent of all cancers are caused by some extrinsic factor,
and one of those factors would be some of these
environmental chemicals.
Speaker 8 (51:01):
And that also means that the bad.
Speaker 9 (51:02):
News in one sense because we're exposed good news in
the sense that maybe eighty to eighty five percent of
all cancers are preventable, no need to go through the treatment.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
But when you talk about eighty six thousand chemicals that
are out there in the world, it is impossible. It
seems to me that all of those can be researched
and all of those can be approved or not approved.
Speaker 9 (51:24):
Yeah, I mean, it feels like an overwhelming task, but
the technology now exists to be able to do it
if the will is there and the funding is there.
That's part of the reason finding that causes is existing.
You know, the old test for whether something with the
cars engine costs five to ten million dollars for a
chemical and involves two years of tests and animals. But
(51:44):
we've now started looking at some of the characteristic changes
that you see in cancer in a test to and
using some high troops of technology with robots to handle
the material. We think we can go through thousands of
them at times and picked out the ones that are
most likely to be the cancer causing agents that if necessary,
(52:04):
to go and test them in the in the goal
of standard test. But I think the technology is going
to allow us to do that kind of thing, be
able to screen that many chemicals.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Doctor, you talked about it. You said that you know,
this is unfortunately probably going to come down to an
issue of funding in the environment that we live in now,
where funding is being pulled away or pushed or you know,
some of it's being recirculated to other locations. Tell me
(52:34):
about funding for this kind of research, where you get
it and what it looks like right now.
Speaker 9 (52:40):
Yeah, sure, so, I mean, historically it's been the NIH
and private foundations like find the Cause. They have been
the main financial drivers of the cancer research. And the
result of that is that ninety nine percent of all
new drugs approved by the FDA have received some sort
of funding or based on or generated with some sort
of funding from the NIA from private foundations. The good
(53:03):
news I suppose there is that for every dollar that's
spent on cancer research is one hundred and fifty percent
return on the investment, so you get back a dollar
more than a dollar fifty. So it really makes a
lot of sense in general to support this center work
both for economic and our physical health. The bad news
(53:24):
is that of the money that goes into the cancer
research historic, but it's only been five percent of it
directed towards prevention, despite us all knowing has been Franklin
said the announce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
And recently the White House has proposed of forty percent
cut in and ANIH funding, and it's already cut four
(53:46):
and a half billion dollars, and that's on top of
really a flat budget over the last twenty years or so.
So it's becoming harder and harder for people to do
the kind of research. Without the support of private foundations
to make up some of the difference, the work on
prevention would all all but disappear. So now the onus
(54:07):
is really on individual investment in foundations like Find the Cause.
I can tell you without that there would be a
lot of graduate students of studying for their PhD or
MD that are just let out in the call. Their
NIH granting grant funds have been pulled out from under them.
(54:27):
So the money that we have is Find the Cause
is now going towards basically rescuing those students and they
are now continuing on doing their work on breast cancer prevention.
That would also include mds and PhDs who recently receive
their degrees are now able to continue their work. And
it also means that the scientists within the Find the
Cause Breast Cancer foundations are able to continue to study
(54:51):
prevention and take high take risks so that they can
make bigger leaps rather than just incremental increases in their
ow understanding of how to prevent breast cancer. So it's
really quite a challenging environment.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
Right now, absolutely, And I'm going to share with our
listeners a way that they can get involved here in
just a few minutes. But before I do, so, you know,
we're talking about breast cancer. But if we can find
the cause of breast cancer, that certainly is going to
lead to finding causes for other kinds of cancers as well.
Speaker 9 (55:23):
Correct, Yeah, that's absolutely right on two levels. Well, the
first is that these environmental chemicals are not just breast
cancer specific. They do in other kinds of cancers, right.
And the second level is that what we're learning is
that part of the reason why people get breast cancer
is because the environmental chemicals suppressed the immune system, and
(55:43):
the immune system is critical to preventing all kinds of cancers.
Without the immune system, you would get all kinds of cancers.
So you're absolutely right one percent that everything we learn
about breast cancer prevention is can all be also be
attributed to brain cancers and lung cancers and liver cancers
and all the others.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
Doctor one final question from me, will a cause be
found in our lifetime?
Speaker 8 (56:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (56:08):
I think that's not an unreasonable assumption. I mean, we
will identify more of the chemicals that are inducing these
cancers and figure out ways to eliminate them from our
everyday household use. And I think we'll be able to
find ways to predict when people who are going to
get cancer way before they do, and then to try
to intercept that at some point, and it'll just be
like all It'll be like a vaccination of some kind
(56:31):
where you just forget about it, you treat it and
then you're done.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Well I hope that is the case. I know you're
doing some incredible work, doctor David Sharri. Thank you so
much and continued successor Now, I just want to let
everyone know that Find the Cost Foundation is having its
annual Prevention Party. It's coming up this Wednesday at the
Omni Saport Hotel. So please to serve as their Master
of Ceremonies for the second year. And if you are
(56:55):
interested you'd like more information about the foundation or about
the event, you can go to Find the Cause BCF
dot org. Well that's going to do it for this
edition of the New England Business Report. Let's take a
look at what's coming up next week. You know the
tower at South Station. They've been talking about it forever,
(57:17):
working on it forever, and believe it or not, we're
seeing signs of the doors opening. We're going to speak
to a representative of the development company about the project
and where it stands at this point. That's all coming
up on the New England Business Report next Sunday at
eight am right here on the Voice of Boston WRKO
AM six eighty
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