Reframe Daily: rectal-cancer trial adds 2 immune drugs; salt water OK in brain surgery; 3D placenta MRI + Stop "Fixing" Yourself

Reframe Daily—curated by Christin Chong (neuroscience PhD, Buddhist chaplain, healthtech strategy consultant)—delivers 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 patient trial found adding two immune drugs before rectal-cancer surgery may help, a study showed strong salt water works as well as mannitol in brain tumor surgery, a new MRI maps placenta blood flow in 3D to catch risks earlier, a PET/CT tracer zeroed in on tiny Cushing’s tumors, and changing T-cell fuel use shifted how they fight viruses and lymphoma in the lab.

Christin’s note: I’m unpacking why meditation isn’t a self-improvement project. When we treat practice like DIY, we just build more “self.” Instead, meditation is self-understanding in order to gently deconstruct it. In walking practice, we lower activity and make space: feel the feet, steady the gaze, and stop feeding the inner to-do list or backstory. We’re not going brain-dead; we’re pausing the mind’s reactive operating system so an emergent one can come online—one that supports peace and real flourishing. Less doing, more un-doing.

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Good news: Doctors tested adding 2 immune drugs to standard chemoradiation before surgery for rectal cancer, and patients did well enough that this approach could help more people keep normal bowel function.

Dual Immune Checkpoint Inhibition Plus Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy in Rectal Cancer: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Market readiness: 🙂🙂🙂 (phase 2 randomized clinical trial in patients; promising but needs phase 3/approvals for this setting). 

Good news: In brain tumor surgery, a common salt solution worked as well as mannitol to relax the brain, using medicines hospitals already have. That can make operations safer and simpler.

Comparison of utilizing a hypertonic saline solution and mannitol to improve brain relaxation during craniotomy in patients with brain tumours: a prospective randomized controlled trial

Market readiness: 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂 (fully on-market fluids; randomized patient trial → can influence practice now). 

Good news: A new MRI method maps how blood flows through the placenta in 3D. This could help doctors spot problems in pregnancy earlier and protect moms and babies.

High-resolution MRI reveals uteroplacental flow dynamics in 3D

Market readiness: 🙂🙂 (prototype imaging tested on human placentas outside the body; needs clinical validation in pregnant patients). 

Good news: Scientists built a targeted PET/CT tracer that locks onto a receptor on tiny pituitary tumors that cause Cushing’s disease. It could make these hard-to-find tumors easier to see.

Using the PET/CT radiotracer [Ga]Ga-DOTA-mDesmo to target V1b receptors and localize corticotropinoma in Cushing’s disease

Market readiness: 🙂 (early preclinical work—lab + animals; human testing still to come). 

Good news: Tweaking how immune cells use fuel changed their attack on viruses and lymphoma in models. Smarter “cell metabolism” tuning could make future vaccines or cancer immunotherapies stronger.

Targeting pyruvate metabolism generates distinct CD8⁺ T cell responses to gammaherpesvirus and B lymphoma

Market readiness: 🙂🙂 (mechanistic, preclinical study—drug-targetable pathway but not yet tested in people for this purpose). 

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