Reframe Daily is where Christin Chong (neuroscience PhD, chaplain, healthtech strategy consultant) curates optimistic and credible healthtech news so you don’t have to.

Today in one sentence: A new drug pair helps kidney-cancer patients live longer, a super-long-lasting shot could keep hepatitis B quiet for months, a revamped pill clears COVID faster, scientists re-connected broken spine nerves so animals move better, and they spotted a chest nerve that tells the body to fight flu harder.

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Good news: A five-year follow-up of the KEYNOTE-426 trial shows the kidney cancer combo pembrolizumab + axitinib keeps patients alive longer than the old drug sunitinib and pinpoints gene “signatures” that tell doctors who benefits most.

Pembrolizumab plus axitinib versus sunitinib for advanced clear-cell renal cell carcinoma: 5-year survival & biomarker analyses

Market readiness: 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂 (Both drugs are already FDA-approved; the new biomarker data can guide treatment right away.)

Good news: A brand-new ultra-long-acting tenofovir prodrug stayed in animals’ bodies for months and kept hepatitis B virus quiet, hinting that patients might need only a few shots a year instead of daily pills.

A scalable ultra-long-acting tenofovir phosphonate prodrug sustains HBV suppression

Market readiness: 🙂🙂 (First success in lab and animal tests; human trials still ahead.)

Good news: In a 300-person randomized trial, an engineered niclosamide nanohybrid pill cleared COVID-19 symptoms faster and slashed viral load—reviving an old drug with new nanotech.

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of a niclosamide nanohybrid for mild-to-moderate COVID-19

Market readiness: 🙂🙂🙂 (Phase 2 results in people; needs larger Phase 3 trials before FDA review.)

Good news: Scientists rewired injured corticospinal nerve tracts in lab models, restoring key brain-to-spine connections—a big step toward therapies that could help people move again after spinal-cord injury.

Precise rewiring of corticospinal axons and spinal circuits after injury

Market readiness: 🙂 (Early animal research; many hurdles before human therapy.)

Good news: Pain-sensing vagal TRPV1 nerves in the chest were discovered to boost the immune system against flu, opening a door to future nerve-targeted antivirals instead of more drugs

Vagal TRPV1 sensory neurons protect against influenza infection

Market readiness: 🙂 (Fresh mechanism found in animals; concept stage for medicines.)

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