Reframe Daily: Longer Kidney Cancer Survival, Year-Round Hep B Control, Faster COVID Cure, Spine Injury Healing

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.

Christin’s note: found any of today’s news interesting and want to apply it to your life or help a loved one out? let’s talk about it in the reframe community!
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Also I’ll be sending a bonus Reframe Daily tomorrow and explain why :)

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.