LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 8, 2025--
A new study led by Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) has linked specific molecular markers at birth to future childhood leukemia risk. The study—the largest of its kind in pediatric leukemia—identified distinct DNA methylation signatures in newborns who later developed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The findings could pave the way for understanding why certain children develop ALL.
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Eric Nickels, MD, MS, a pediatric oncologist in the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at CHLA, presented the results Dec. 6 in an oral presentation at the 2025 American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in Orlando, Florida.
“This study gives us a window into the earliest molecular changes that precede childhood leukemia,” Dr. Nickels says. “It’s exciting because it moves us closer to understanding which children may be at risk for this cancer.”
Early clues at birth
Scientists have long suspected that pediatric ALL begins before birth, with early genetic changes arising during fetal development. But until now, researchers had limited ability to examine epigenetic features that could contribute to a child’s risk. One of those features is DNA methylation—chemical tags that regulate which genes are turned on or off. “If you think of DNA as a textbook, methylation tells the cell which pages to read,” Dr. Nickels explains.
To study these markers at birth, he and his collaborators at the Keck School of Medicine of USC accessed an extraordinary resource: nearly 1,700 archived newborn blood spots collected across California during routine newborn screenings.
A clear pattern
When the team compared methylation patterns across these samples, a striking signal emerged. Babies who developed ALL in childhood showed consistent differences in DNA methylation at birth compared with healthy controls.
Researchers found one of the strongest associations at a site in ARID5B, a gene already linked to ALL—making this finding especially compelling.
The team also identified more than 100 regions where methylation patterns differed between newborns who developed ALL as children and those who did not. Many of these regions were located in genes involved in blood cell development or previously linked to leukemia biology, including FLI1 and LAX1.
Together, these findings suggest that measurable epigenetic differences are present at birth in children who later develop ALL.
“Seeing these differences in newborns tells us that important biological changes are happening far earlier than we can usually detect,” Dr. Nickels says.
Future directions
The team is now studying how these early patterns influence gene activity and how they compare with changes seen at diagnosis. That knowledge could help reveal which molecular pathways are disrupted first—and which might be targets for intervention.
Because some methylation changes are shaped by maternal nutrition and environmental exposures, the study opens the door to exploring whether certain risks could eventually be reduced—preventing leukemia from ever developing.
“This is a first step toward that long-term goal, but it’s an important one,” Dr. Nickels says. “The more we learn about how leukemia begins, the closer we will be to finding ways to predict—and potentially prevent—this disease.”
About Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is at the forefront of pediatric medicine and is the largest provider of hospital care for children in California. Since its founding in 1901, CHLA has delivered a level of pediatric care that is among the best in the world. Ranked one of the top 10 children’s hospitals in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles provides comprehensive and compassionate care to one of the largest and most diverse pediatric patient populations in the country. The hospital is the top-ranked children’s hospital in California and the Pacific U.S. region for 2025-26. A leader in pediatric research, CHLA is among the top 10 children’s hospitals for research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles supports the full continuum of research, translating scientific discoveries into life-changing treatments for patients around the globe. As a pediatric academic medical center, CHLA is also home to one of the largest graduate education programs for pediatricians in the United States. The hospital’s commitment to building stronger, healthier communities is evident in CHLA’s efforts to enhance health education and literacy, introduce more people to careers in health care, and fight food insecurity. To learn more, follow CHLA on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and X, and visit CHLA.org.
Eric Nickels, MD, MS pediatric oncologist in the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, presented the study results Dec. 6 in an oral presentation at the 2025 American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in Orlando, Florida.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 8, 2025--
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Spanish Mountain Gold Drills Extensive Mineralization Over 140.67 metres Grading 0.68 g/t Including 1.07 g/t Over 17.00 metres and 0.95 g/t Over 67.31 metres and Extends the Orca Fault Target Trend 130 m to Southeast Drilling 26.46 metres Grading 0.80 g/t Gold
Spanish Mountain Gold Ltd. (the " Company " or " Spanish Mountain Gold ") (TSX-V: SPA) (FSE: S3Y) (OTCQB: SPAUF) is pleased to provide additional assay results from exploration drill holes 25-DH-1300, 25-DH-1302, and 25-DH-1304 that were completed as part of its 2025 Fall Diamond Drill program (“ 2025 Fall Drill Program ”) for the Spanish Mountain Gold (“ SMG ”) project, which is located in the Cariboo Gold Corridor, British Columbia, Canada.
The company has completed approximately 7,800 m of drilling to date of the 9,000 to 10,000 metres (“ m ”) of exploration drilling planned under the 2025 Fall Drill Program. Assays and geochemistry are pending receipt from the laboratory and or reporting from sixteen (16) additional drill holes completed on the newly defined Orca Fault area, and from three (3) completed drill holes on the A12 target.
Highlights:
Key Findings:
Peter Mah, Spanish Mountain Gold’s President & CEO commented, “These most recent Orca Fault area drill results continue to extend new higher grade gold mineralization in the heart of the Main Deposit. Gold assays received from three new holes reported intersecting large, near surface gold mineralization above the global average resource grade. Additionally, assays included multiple near surface high-grade intersections in each hole approaching and exceeding 1 g/t gold. The company is pleased with the consistency and growing number of above 1 g/t gold assays that further demonstrate the potential for growth through new high-grade gold mineralization within the Main Deposit. This coupled with ore sorting defines the Company’s twofold strategy to scale up gold production at its proposed mining operation in the Tier 1 Cariboo Gold Corridor, British Columbia, Canada.”
Main Deposit – Orca Fault area
Drill hole 25-DH-1300 (see Table 1) was designed to not only confirm the new Orca Fault target but also to start building stronger continuity northeast to southwest across section lines to increase the overall confidence in the geological interpretation of this important area (Figure 2). The drill hole intersected higher-grade mineralization approximately 36 m northeast of drill hole 25-DH-1299 (see December 1, 2025 news release) intersecting 140.67 m of 0.68 g/t gold including two high-grade intervals of 17.00 m of 1.07 g/t gold and 67.31 m of 0.95 g/t gold with a subset of 12.78 m of 2.85 g/t gold. It should be noted that this intercept aligns closely to the intersections in 25-DH-1299, which had a first interval near surface from 48.18 to 188.00 m of 0.82 g/t gold over 139.82 m and a second near the base of constraining open pit shell for the 2025 Mineral Resource Estimate (see July 3, 2025 news release) from 284.00 to 329.54 m, grading 1.67 g/t gold over 45.54 m, including 33.54 m of 2.19 g/t gold. The deeper intercept in 25-DH-1299 highlights the mineral potential at depth that will require additional drilling to further delineate, but investors should be cautioned it is not guaranteed that additional drilling will result in conversion of this area into the mineral resource estimate.
Drill hole 25-DH-1302 (Table 2) was designed to examine a critical area along the northwest trend of the new Orca Fault target at edge of the block model from the last mineral resource estimate (“MRE”) in the recent Preliminary Economic Assessment (see July 3, 2025 news release). The drill hole was collared 33 m northeast of 25-DH-1292 (Figure 3) and it intersected two key intervals of higher-grade mineralization (Figure 1), the first interval from 49.64 to 152.20 m, 102.56 m of 0.55 g/t gold including 47.99 m of 0.81 g/t gold with a higher-grade subset of 12.63 m of 1.44 g/t gold, and the second from 200.64 to 273.75 m, 73.11 m of 0.50 g/t gold including 33.15 m of 0.77 g/t gold with a higher-grade subset of 16.38 m of 1.23 g/t gold. These results compare very favorably with drill hole 25-DH-1292 (see November 3, 2025 news release) and extend gold mineralization to the northwest, highlighting the opportunity of systematically exploring these new structural trends both inside and outside of the MRE block model (Figure 1).
Drill hole 25-DH-1304 (Table 3), like 25-DH-1296 (see November 17, 2025 news release), it was designed to step into the structural domain between Fault 2 and Fault 3, looking to extend the high-grade gold mineralization to the southeast, where it is interpreted to be a southeasterly extension of the new Orca Fault target (Figure 1). This drill hole intersected 26.46 m of 0.80 g/t gold from 62.72 to 89.18 m, including 8.03 m of 1.61 g/t gold with a higher-grade subset of 4.28 m of 2.26 g/t gold (Figure 1) within the constraining open pit for the MRE (see July 3, 2025 news release). Although gold mineralization has been successfully hit historically in this area, it has not been through applying a systematic exploration approach using the preferred drilling orientation of 120-degrees that has proven successful in this work program.
The results from these three new exploration drill holes add significant confidence to the geological and structural interpretation of the new Orca Fault target area, when incorporating 25-DH-1281 and 25-DH-1282 (see April 21, 2025 news release), 25-DH-1292 and 25-DH-1293 (see November 3, 2025 news release), 25-DH-1294 and 25-DH-1296 (see November 17, 2025 news release), and 25-DH-1297, 25-DH-1298, and 25-DH-1299 (see December 1, 2025 news release). All these results continue to show that tighter exploration drill spacing at the preferred azimuth of 120-degrees is unlocking additional mineral potential in the Main deposit. These exploration drill holes are presented on a drill section (Figure 1 and Figure 2) that shows the alignment of the higher-grade mineralization to the new Orca Fault target.
Table 1: Assay Results for 25-DH-1300
Table 2: Assay Results for 25-DH-1302
Table 3: Assay Results for 25-DH-1304
The integration of assay results from 25-DH-1300, 25-DH-1302, and 25-DH-1304 with other recently released drill holes, strengthens the continuity for the new Orca Fault target and the association of higher-grade mineralization over a strike length of 430 m, northwest to southeast (see Figure 1 and Figure 2) now spanning two parallel, adjacent drill sections.
The current interpretation is that there is strong continuity between these section lines linking geology, structure and the higher-grade mineralization. The mineralization in these drill holes occurs in faults and quartz-dominated veins that appear to extend for more than 25 m beyond each drill hole. Two dominant sets of veins were identified, high-angle and low-angle. The lower-angle veins (~45 degrees) occur in proximity to the Orca Fault (see November 3, 2025 news releases).
Figure 3 illustrates the locations for three drill hole results outlined in this news release and the drill holes currently in the assay lab, or in process of being drilled. Drill collar location coordinates are summarized for the 2025 Fall Drill Program in Table 4 at the end of this news release.
Abbreviations: metres = m, grams per tonne = g/t, gold = Au, mineral resource estimate = MRE, Spanish Mountain Gold = SMG
Drill Core Processing, Data Verification and Quality Assurance – Quality Control Program (QAQC)
Once received from the drill and processed, all drill core samples were sawn in half, labeled, and bagged. The remaining half of the drill core was securely stored on-site. Numbered security tags were applied to sample shipments to ensure chain of custody compliance. The Company inserts quality control (QC) samples at regular intervals, including blanks and reference materials, for all sample shipments to monitor laboratory performance. Standards and blanks account for a minimum of 20% of the samples in addition to the laboratory’s internal quality assurance programs. The QAQC program was overseen by the Company’s Qualified Person, Julian Manco, P.Geo, Director of Exploration (as described below).
The data verification process involved a multi-step approach to ensure accuracy and integrity. This included a detailed quality control (QC) analysis of the data, which was performed using both internal and external platforms, such as the MxDeposit ™ software. These QC checks involved the analysis of certified reference materials (CRMs), blanks, and duplicates to confirm the reliability of the assay results. In addition, a field inspection of the specific drill intervals mentioned in this release has been conducted to directly observe the geological features and verified the nature of the results presented.
Drill core samples were submitted to MSALABS’s analytical facility in Prince George, British Columbia, for sample preparation and PhotonAssay ™ analysis. The MSALABS facilities are accredited to the International Standards ISO/IEC 17025 and ISO 9001 standard for gold and multi-element assays, with all analytical methods incorporating quality control materials at defined frequencies and established data acceptance criteria. MSALABS Inc. is independent of the Company.
PhotonAssay™
The PhotonAssay ™ method utilizes gamma ray analysis for gold detection using the Chrysos PhotonAssay ™ instrument (PA1408X). This non-destructive, fully automated technique offers high accuracy for analyzing ores and pulps. Sample preparation begins with drying and crushing up to 1 kg of material to achieve at least 70% passing through a 2-millimetre (mm) sieve. The sample is then riffle split to obtain a suitable aliquot for 2 testing cycles (MSALABS Method CPA-Au1).
The PhotonAssay ™ instrument bombards 400- to 600-gram samples contained in sealed containers with gamma rays. These containers remain sealed throughout the process, preserving the sample for potential further testing. The analysis is performed robotically, with results that integrate into existing laboratory management systems. Each sample is accompanied by a reference disc traceable to a Certified Reference Material (CRM). Both the sample and reference disc undergo gamma ray exposure, with signals detected and analyzed to ensure accurate and reliable results. The method offers a gold detection range from 0.015 parts per million (ppm - lower limit) to 10,000 ppm (upper limit). Quality control includes the use of reference materials and blanks, with all results reviewed by a competent person before reporting.
Spanish Mountain Gold implemented two QAQC methodologies to validate the accuracy of PhotonAssay ™ results, both demonstrating good comparability: 1) comparative analysis of diverse mineralization styles using Total Au screen metallic methods with both FAS-415 (gravimetric finish) and FAS-211 (AAS finish), and 2) comprehensive testing of both sample aliquots and rejects using FAS-211 (AAS finish). QAQC Testing typically can include the following spot checks: 1) Pulverizing tests to evaluate variability in sample preparation, 2) Cross-analysis at external laboratories using screen metallic method, and 3) Four-cycle radiation testing to identify and calibrate potential variability in gold results with variable radiation intensity.
Multi-Elemental Analysis
For the 2025 drilling campaign Spanish Mountain Gold used IMS-230 method to provide multi-element determination using a four-acid digestion followed by ICP-OES and ICP-MS analysis.
Key Process Steps:
Sample Preparation: Samples are dried and ground to a specific criterion (85% passing 75 microns (μm) for rocks and drill core; 180μm for soils and sediments). A homogeneous 10-gram sample is required. Digestion: Samples undergo sequential digestion with nitric, perchloric, hydrofluoric, and hydrochloric acids, followed by dilution with deionized water.
Analysis: The solution is analyzed via ICP-OES and ICP-MS for multi-element quantification. Quality Control: The process includes reference materials, blanks, and duplicates, with corrections for spectral interferences and thorough review before final reporting.
Qualified Person
Julian Manco, M.Sc., P.Geo., Director of Exploration with Spanish Mountain Gold, is the Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101 who has reviewed the technical information in this news release and has approved the content for dissemination.
About Spanish Mountain Gold Ltd.
Spanish Mountain Gold Ltd. is focused on advancing its 100%-owned Spanish Mountain Gold Project (Project) towards construction of the next gold mine in the Cariboo Gold Corridor, British Columbia. On August 18, 2025, the Company filed an NI 43-101 Technical Report on SEDAR+ that sets out the Project’s de-risked and optimized Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA), with an updated Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE). We will continue to advance the Project to position the Company to make a construction decision in 2027. We are striving to be a leader in community and Indigenous relations by leveraging technology and innovation to build the 'greenest' gold mine in Canada. The Relentless Pursuit for Better Gold means seeking new ways to achieve optimal financial outcomes that are safer, minimize environmental impact and create meaningful sustainability for communities. Details on the Company are available on www.sedarplus.ca and on the Company's website: www.spanishmountaingold.com.
On Behalf of the Board,
“Peter Mah”
President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Spanish Mountain Gold Ltd.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION:
Certain of the statements and information in this press release constitute "forward-looking information". Any statements or information that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "plans", "estimates", "intends", "targets", "goals", "forecasts", "objectives", "potential" or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be considered forward-looking information. The Company's forward-looking information is based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management as of the date of this press release and include but are not limited to information with respect to, the potential for adding more higher-grade gold mineralization within the pit or below current pit design; and the timing and size (m) of the 2025 Fall Drill Program, and the results thereof. Other than as required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking information if circumstances or management's assumptions, beliefs, expectations or opinions should change, or changes in any other events affecting such statements or information. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.
Table 4: Drill Collar Information for Drill Holes
Figure 3: Drill Collar Location Map for 2025 Fall Drill Program
Figure 2: Drill Cross Section Through Orca Fault Area (looking northwest); section line B-B’ (see Figure 3)
Figure 1: Drill Long Section Through Orca Fault Area (looking northeast); section line A-A’ (see Figure 3)
