Reframe Daily: Old diabetes pill still works, new cancer vaccines, and a parasite shot in early tests

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: An everyday diabetes drug is cutting insulin needs in adults with type 1 diabetes; a rare-cancer vaccine is teaming up with immunotherapy to control tumors; a schistosomiasis vaccine is safely training the immune system; donor-cell CAR-T therapy is giving strong responses in hard-to-treat myeloma; and boosting meningeal immune cells in mice is easing early Alzheimer’s-like brain damage and memory problems.

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Good news: A cheap, old diabetes pill may help people with type 1 diabetes use less insulin and improve daily control. That could mean fewer injections and more stable blood sugar for many adults living with this condition.

Effect of metformin on insulin resistance in adults with type 1 diabetes: a 26-week randomized double-blind clinical trial

Market readiness: 🙂🙂🙂🙂 (metformin is already widely available in the US; this new trial in adults with type 1 diabetes shows it can safely cut insulin needs by about 12% when added to insulin, so doctors can start using this off-label now even though guidelines and labels have not yet caught up)

Good news: A first-in-human vaccine for schistosomiasis – a parasitic disease that affects hundreds of millions of people – was safe and triggered strong immune responses in US adults. This is a big early step toward protecting people in areas where this disease is common.

Safety and immunogenicity of the Sm-p80 GLA-SE schistosomiasis vaccine

Market readiness: 🙂🙂 (this Phase 1 trial tested SchistoShield in 45 healthy adults and showed good safety and strong antibody responses, but larger Phase 1b and Phase 2 trials in African endemic regions are only just underway, so it is still years from routine use)

Good news: People with a very rare liver cancer called fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma (FLC) now have early evidence that a vaccine built to target their specific tumor driver can work together with existing immunotherapy to shrink tumors and keep disease under control in some patients. This is promising for a cancer that has had very few options.

A therapeutic peptide vaccine for fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma: a phase 1 trial

Market readiness: 🙂🙂 (in this Phase 1 trial, 12 evaluable patients received the DNAJ-PKAc–targeted peptide vaccine plus nivolumab and ipilimumab; 75% had disease control and 25% had partial responses, but this is still an early, small study, so much larger trials are required before any approval)

Good news: An “off-the-shelf” CAR-T cell therapy for multiple myeloma showed strong early responses with mild side effects, using donor T-cells engineered to be safer and longer-lasting. This could one day make CAR-T treatment faster and easier to access for patients whose own T-cells are too weak or slow to manufacture.

T_SCM-predominant allogeneic anti-BCMA CAR-T therapy for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma: preclinical characterization and interim results from a phase 1 trial

Market readiness: 🙂🙂 (this Nature Communications paper reports interim Phase 1 results: among 11 evaluable patients given an enhanced lymphodepletion regimen, 82% responded and 64% reached very good partial response or better, with only grade 1–2 cytokine-release syndrome; the product is still in early clinical testing and not yet filed for approval)

Good news: In an Alzheimer’s mouse model, boosting a special type of immune cell that lives on the brain’s surface improved social memory and reduced early brain damage. This points to a brand-new kind of immune-based treatment target for slowing disease in its earliest stages.

Meningeal macrophages alleviate social memory defects in an early Alzheimer’s disease model

Market readiness: 🙂 (this study in mice shows that adding “M2-like” meningeal macrophages or boosting their TGF-β1 signal reduces amyloid buildup and myelin damage and improves social behavior; it is mechanistic, preclinical work, so many steps remain before any human treatment)

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