Halifax predicts the housing market will remain subdued this year
Britain’s biggest drugmaker AstraZeneca has received a boost, as its blockbuster cancer drug Imfinzi showed positive results as a treatment for aggressive lung cancer in a late-stage clinical trial.
The drug demonstrated a “statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement” in both the overall survival of patients with limited-stage small cell lung cancer, and the survival of of patients without the disease progressing.
These exciting results build on the transformative efficacy of Imfinzi in extensive-stage small cell lung cancer and demonstrate the potential to bring a curative-intent immunotherapy treatment to this earlier-stage setting of small cell lung cancer for the first time.
These data, together with the PACIFIC data in unresectable, Stage III non-small cell lung cancer, underscore the pioneering role of Imfinzi in the treatment of early lung cancer following chemoradiotherapy.
The first decline in the Halifax house price index in six months confirmed that the slight rise in mortgage rates since the start of the year has caused house prices to stall.
Looking ahead, we expect mortgage rates to remain higher than in January and February and hover at just under 5% over the coming months, which will subdue demand and prevent further gains in house prices. But given public house price expectations are positive, we doubt prices will fall much either.
