Reframe Daily: New eye cancer cream, cooler prostate surgery, lab-grown liver repair (and happy thanksgiving!)

Reframe Daily—curated by Christin Chong (neuroscience PhD, Buddhist chaplain, healthtech strategy consultant)—delivers optimistic and credible health research updates you won’t find in most popular news outlets, from sources scientists and healthcare providers read and trust.

Today in one sentence: Today’s science tests a cancer-fighting eye cream, a cold shield for prostate nerves, drug plans that may shorten time on breathing machines, and bile acid and oxytocin tricks in animals that push damaged livers to burn fat and grow back stronger.

Christin’s note: It is Thanksgiving in the USA, and I am thankful for all of you! Reframe Daily will be back next Monday. :)

Good news: This study suggests some people with certain eye-surface cancers might be treated with a cream medicine instead of more surgery or radiation. The cream helped shrink or clear the tumors in every patient in the small study, and side effects were mostly temporary eye irritation.s

Imiquimod Treatment for Conjunctival Melanoma In Situ or Ocular Surface Squamous Neoplasia

Market readiness: 🙂🙂🙂🙂 (imiquimod 5% cream is already FDA‑approved for skin conditions, and this is an early but promising interventional case series using a compounded eye ointment, so eye‑care teams could consider off‑label use now while larger trials are still needed)

Good news: Cooling the nerves around the prostate during robot‑assisted surgery helped more men get their erections back, and in some men it also sped up return of urine control, without adding new safety problems. That could mean better quality of life after prostate cancer surgery.

Functional outcomes of hypothermic robot assisted radical prostatectomy using BELLOCOOL nerve protection system: a randomized controlled trial

Market readiness: 🙂🙂🙂 (this is a 200‑patient randomized trial of a specific cooling system used during an existing standard surgery; the device concept is practical but still needs more studies, regulatory clearance, and real‑world adoption before it becomes routine in the US)

Good news: By pooling 15 randomized trials, researchers found that some existing medicines (like nandrolone, growth hormone, and donepezil) may help adults on breathing machines come off the ventilator sooner and leave the ICU faster, even though none clearly lowered the risk of death yet. This gives doctors a clearer map of which drugs look most promising to test and use when trying to wean patients from mechanical ventilation.

Comparative effects of respiratory stimulants in mechanically ventilated patients: a network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Market readiness: 🙂🙂🙂 (all of the drugs studied are already on the market for other uses, but their role as “respiratory stimulants” in ventilated ICU patients is based on modest, mixed data that still needs larger confirmatory trials before becoming standard practice)

Good news: In lab dishes and in mice with fatty liver from an unhealthy diet, the hormone oxytocin lowered liver fat, cut liver damage markers, and improved cholesterol. It did this by turning on a “fat‑burning” pathway (AMPK) and turning down “fat‑making” genes, suggesting a new way to treat metabolic dysfunction‑associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in the future.

Oxytocin Attenuates Metabolic Dysfunction-associated Steatotic Liver Disease via AMPK/SREBP1c/FAS-mediated Suppression of Hepatic Lipogenesis

Market readiness: 🙂 (this is mostly cell and mouse work plus human biomarker data; oxytocin itself is approved for labor induction, but using it as a MASLD drug would require full-dose finding, safety, and efficacy trials in people)

Good news: In a rat model of major liver surgery, giving an oral bile‑acid compound called sodium taurocholate helped the remaining liver grow back faster. The treated rats had more dividing liver cells and a bigger regrowing liver lobe, linked to changes in bile‑acid pathways and the Hippo signaling pathway. This could one day help make big liver operations safer by boosting regrowth of the healthy part of the liver.

Sodium taurocholate promotes liver regeneration after portal vein ligation in rats

Market readiness: 🙂 (this is an animal study showing a proof‑of‑concept; the doses, safety, and benefits would all need to be carefully tested in humans before any clinical use)

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