That's sad. I hope someone picks up the torch. The research sounds very promising.

A few questions about the mechanism:

1. How selective is this approach? Cancer cells are notoriously heterogeneous - do different cancer types or subtypes respond differently to this metabolic pressure?

2. The cold exposure converting white to beige fat is interesting, but what about the feasibility for actual patients? Sustained cold exposure seems difficult to maintain for someone already dealing with cancer treatment.

3. Has anyone looked at whether this could work synergistically with existing metabolic therapies like metformin or ketogenic diets? The metabolic stress combined with nutrient competition could be powerful.

4. What's the risk of adaptive resistance? Cancer cells are remarkably good at finding alternative metabolic pathways when stressed.

RIP to Nguyen - it's heartbreaking when promising researchers pass before seeing their work come to fruition. Hope the team continues this line of investigation.

Also, I think in some cases you can pair it with the Wim Hof Method to make short extreme cold exposure more bearable. I don’t know what the interaction is with norepinephrine though as doing the WHM, one releases a lot of it [4] (I was part of this experiment as a participant so remember the paper quite well). Note, I am not claiming the WHM may help with suppressing cancer, I am simply claiming that it is my experience that performing the WHM makes cold exposure a bit more comfortable. I suspect this is because tons of norepinephrine goes through your body.

On day 4 of our WHM training we were walking 2.5 hours to the top of some Polish ski resort near Wim’s house. It was -7 degrees Celsius. We had shoes on and shorts. No one got frostbite (24 people in total did it, 2 groups of 12 - a few weeks apart). There were 2 research doctors with us (though they were capable doctors as they needed to apply oxygen to one person almost, as he took the training on day 3 really far as we were encouraged to by the doctors and Wim - ultimately it wasn’t needed. Just before they rushed to apply it he started breathing himself again and regained consciousness).

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05030-3

[2] https://news.ki.se/cool-room-temperature-inhibited-cancer-gr...

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01284-5

[4] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322174111

However, this article also seems to imply that frequent cold exposure that converts your own white fat cells into beige fat cells could be effective at both treating and preventing cancer.

They state without explanation that cold therapy cannot be done by cancer patients, but I don’t see why not. I take an ice bath every morning as it helps with my mental health, and its really not that shocking or difficult when you’re used to it as the very adaptation they’re talking about here eventually makes it easy to tolerate cold- your body adapts to be able to keep you warm. I can and do still do it when I’m sick, fatigued, or slept poorly.

Moreover, before modern climate controlled environments and low cost warm clothing humans naturally experienced cold a lot more often and were probably already cold adapted, even in warm climates. Could modern heating systems be predisposing us to cancer by making our metabolism work abnormally?

every time