Reframe Daily: CRISPR restores adult-mouse hearing; PD-1 excels in rare melanoma

Reframe Daily is where Christin Chong (neuroscience PhD, chaplain, healthtech strategy consultant) curates optimistic and credible healthtech updates you won’t find in most popular news outlets, from sources scientists and healthcare providers read and trust.

Today in one sentence: A PD-1 cancer drug worked well in a hard-to-treat skin cancer with strong 3-year survival; scientists decoded “inner speech” brain signals to guide better voice prostheses; brief cell reprogramming reversed age-related cell drift; a one-shot CRISPR fix restored hearing and balance in adult deaf mice; and mapping retinoic-acid “switches” pointed to ways to heal skin with less scarring.

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Good news: A single-agent immunotherapy shrank tumors dramatically in a tough-to-treat melanoma subtype, and most patients were still alive at 3 years.

Anti-PD-1 therapy in unresectable desmoplastic melanoma: the phase 2 SWOG S1512 trial

Market readiness: 🙂🙂🙂🙂 (pembrolizumab is already FDA-approved; this study supports off-label use for this subtype while guidelines catch up). 

Good news: Scientists decoded “inner speech” signals from the brain’s motor cortex, pointing to future voice prostheses for people who can’t speak.

Inner speech in motor cortex and implications for speech neuroprostheses

Market readiness: 🙂🙂 (human neurophysiology study informing next-gen BCI speech devices; not yet a clinical product). 

Good news: Short, controlled reprogramming pulses reversed age-related “mesenchymal drift” in cells, hinting at a way to reset aging tissues without fully turning cells into stem cells.

Prevalent mesenchymal drift in aging and disease is reversed by partial reprogramming

Market readiness: 🙂 (preclinical mechanistic study; therapeutic approach not yet tested in humans). 

Good news: A one-time CRISPR-based gene edit restored both hearing and balance in adult mice with DFNA41 hereditary deafness—showing that single-dose fixes may work even after development.

Single-Dose Genome Editing Therapy Rescues Auditory and Vestibular Functions in Adult Mice with DFNA41 Deafness

Market readiness: 🙂 (preclinical in mice; lays groundwork for first-in-human studies). 

Good news: Researchers mapped how retinoic acid steers skin toward scarring or regeneration, flagging drug targets that could help wounds heal with less scar.

Multi-omic analysis reveals retinoic acid molecular drivers for dermal fibrosis and regenerative repair in the skin

Market readiness: 🙂 (target discovery/mechanistic paper; candidate therapies still to come). 

Thank you for taking the time to take care of yourself and your loved ones.