From the BBC, which I tuned into to learn about the Queen beating the record of her great-great grandmother for longevity on the throne, I learned this morning about a possible cancer cure. A a sponge made out of biomaterial already used for medical devices can mop up cancer cells moving around the body to create metastases—and stop them in their tracks. So far the implanted sponge has only been tested in mice with induced breast cancer.

But it may work in other mammals, like humans.

When a cancer has been treated with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, stray cells may still be left which move into a new part of the body to start another tumor. So mopping them up can improve outcomes and extend lives. The research was done at the Dept of Biomedical Engineering at the U of Michigan. Its Prof. Lonnie Shea says the next step is testing in humans. The information the Beeb picked up was published in Nature Communications.

It is really fun tracking the stock markets this week. Even our Australian biotech which did its ipo in the midst of the mayhem last month is up. Happy days are here again!

The main reason is that Japan is cutting its corporate taxes to encourage investment. Our Tokyo (and Osaka) shares picked by Chris Loew and me are all up sharply along with most of Hong Kong and Singapore. The Nikkei average rose 7.7% on Wednesday also because short-sellers had to reverse their positions. The Japanese corporate tax rate, now 34.62%, will be cut to 31.32% next year.

Like Jeb Bush I would like to see a similar cut in US corporate taxes which have a distorting effect on US stock prices as well as encouraging inversions, over-borrowing, and buybacks. It is also why Yahoo cannot sell its Alibaba stock before Marissa Mayer has her twins.

But I want to warn you all that it is not going to go up without a break from now on. When they asked John Pierpont Morgan what would happen to stocks, he sagely replied: “They will fluctuate.”