3 ms·

Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

166 points by mrtnmrtn 9mo ago

sejje 9mo ago
> Nguyen moved to UT Austin to start his own lab in January 2024 but passed away suddenly in November before he could finish the final experiments. The paper, of which he is the first author, is dedicated to him. That's sad. I hope someone picks up the torch. The research sounds very promising.
- __natty__ 9mo ago
  And he was only 35. Rest in peace.
  - rajnathani 9mo ago
    Really interesting research. Rest in peace. An aside: The cause of death was a stroke: https://nutrition.utexas.edu/about-us/memoriam https://nutrition.utexas.edu/about-us/memoriam
- sigmoid10 9mo ago
  The thing is, this is not really new. People have been pushing this metabolic theory of cancer for a long time now and even used it to propose things like cold therapy or ketogenic diets as a treatment option, despite the fact that we have very little evidence that any of this stuff really works. It is still refreshing to see people target cancer from a theory-first standpoint instead of the usual empirical tactics, but the theoretical foundation of cancer science simply isn't that good. Clinicians also aren't slow to adapt or scared to experiment with these new approaches, because everyone would jump immediately on those fancy low-invasive supplement treatments when the alternative is certain death. But you can't game the final survivability statistics, now matter how reasonable your theory sounds or how well founded it is.
  - adrian_b 9mo ago
    I do not remember "evidence that any of this stuff really works" about curing an existing cancer, but there was rather strong evidence in large-scale studies with various lab animals, in which a mutagen agent created tumors when they were fed normally, but no tumors appeared when they were malnourished, either by eating a reduced amount of protein, or by eating the normal amount of protein, but with a bad amino-acid profile. Both forms of malnutrition would diminish the capacity of synthesizing proteins, which would affect mainly a fast-growing organ, like the tumors. Presumably this slowed down the growth of the tumors, allowing time for the immune system to react and suppress them in their incipient form. Unfortunately, malnutrition as a prophylactic measure does not really work, as it enhances the risk of other diseases, even if it might lower the risk of cancer. The method described in the parent article might have better chances, but it seems likely to work only with a cancer that has been discovered very early.
    - sigmoid10 9mo ago
      Yes, this is exactly what theory-first approaches look like. And no, there is no data that any of this really works in humans. If it was about curing cancer in mice that were genetically engineered to have cancer in the first place, of course we'd already be there. But it isn't and we aren't.
_yb2s 9mo ago
This is fascinating and sounds really promising. 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?
- OutOfHere 9mo ago
  The problem with chronic cold exposure is that it makes one very hungry, a lot hungrier than usual, with the compensatory calorie consumption risking negating the intended benefit.
  - _yb2s 9mo ago
    If white fat converts to beige fat, it is going to be burning a lot more calories, so you ultimately would have to eat more to maintain a stable body weight. It’s not clear to me that this would negate the benefit. If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from calorie restriction. A quick search shows that there does seem to be an anti cancer therapeutic benefit from calorie restriction, so this seems at least plausible. So this raises the research question of if increasing calorie intake to keep weight stable completely negates the anti-cancer benefits of increased beige fat or not. I’m curious if that has been investigated yet.
    - bratwurst3000 9mo ago
      in all respect sorry this is wrong. this is a broad misinformation. It can enhance but also supresse cancer dependig of soo much we dont know yet enough to know if fasting is beneficial or dangerous. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cam4.5577 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cam4.5577 edit:// and the article has imho nothinh to do with autophagy. Its about beige fat cells eating stuff away from cancer not autophagy wich happened in the innercell. And if you go into caloric deficit you could burn away those beige fat cells that "heal" the cancer.
OutOfHere 9mo ago
[flagged]
- gavinray 9mo ago
  > I can't wait to be downvoted for sharing something useful, which pretty much is par for the course on this site, i.e. altogether shallow people voting only on the basis of what they already believe in. I think you're getting downvoted more on the basis of making claims without providing credible evidence. If you really wanted to fend off the downvotes, I probably would have linked at least a handful of well-designed studies with outcomes supporting your claims. Also, Occam's Razor would suggest that if it truly worked, surely the very smart people trying to solve this problem would have known about + adopted it.
  - OutOfHere 9mo ago
    > Also, Occam's Razor would suggest that if it truly worked, surely the very smart people trying to solve this problem would have known about + adopted it. Please save me from such nonsense. Only naive people believe that. Informed people know that nothing is pursued by big corporations if there isn't big money in it. And there isn't since it's a cheap common product produced around the world. As a further example, mRNA tech was intentionally rejected, ignored, and not developed for decades. Meanwhile, the false beta-amyloid theory of Alzheimers was purused for over a decade even though it was very clear informed people that it's a dumb theory. People are not as smart as you think they are, not even close. As for the studies, PMID 27980600 and DOI 10.1016/j.hermed.2024.100875 are a fair start, although the latter is paywalled.
- sroussey 9mo ago
  People don’t like claims with no source. This is not Reddit. For sources: Overview of studies, including human: https://www.xiahepublishing.com/m/2835-6357/FIM-2024-00006 https://www.xiahepublishing.com/m/2835-6357/FIM-2024-00006 NIH: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21889885/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21889885/ Most recent I could find: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51617171_Tiliroside_a_glycosidic_flavonoid_ameliorates_obesity-induced_metabolic_disorders_via_activation_of_adiponectin_signaling_followed_by_enhancement_of_fatty_acid_oxidation_in_liver_and_skeletal_muscle_i https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51617171_Tiliroside...
edwardtay 9mo ago
The metabolic competition angle is fascinating - it's elegant how this leverages the body's own resource allocation rather than trying to poison cancer cells directly. 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.
- Dumblydorr 9mo ago
  It’s CRISPR and injection changing their fat cells, not cold exposure. They theorized something in cold exposure modulated energy and fat, they found genes and tested which one works best via crispr, the ucp1
semessier 9mo ago
triggering the cold signal artificially might be an approach
fnord77 9mo ago
> implanted in mice every time
mettamage 9mo ago
For the curious among us, here are articles related to cold exposure in mice and cancer [1, 2, 3]. I briefly skimmed it but seems like a somewhat plausible idea in the realm of: if it doesn’t hurt you, it can perhaps benefit you. 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 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05030-3 [2] https://news.ki.se/cool-room-temperature-inhibited-cancer-growth-in-mice https://news.ki.se/cool-room-temperature-inhibited-cancer-gr... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01284-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01284-5 [4] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322174111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322174111
- manmal 9mo ago
  Why would someone do this to themselves? Such a trip doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. Wouldn’t long term sauna have similar effects and be way less straining on the cardiovascular system?
  - mettamage 9mo ago
    Don't know, haven't looked into it. Do you have any sources I could start reading on?
cathyreisenwitz 9mo ago
"Fat cells have many advantages... They are easy to obtain from patients." LOL. Also, we'll see if that's still true once everyone is on Ozempic.

166 points by mrtnmrtn 9mo ago

sejje 9mo ago

> Nguyen moved to UT Austin to start his own lab in January 2024 but passed away suddenly in November before he could finish the final experiments. The paper, of which he is the first author, is dedicated to him. That's sad. I hope someone picks up the torch. The research sounds very promising.

__natty__ 9mo ago
And he was only 35. Rest in peace.
- rajnathani 9mo ago
  Really interesting research. Rest in peace. An aside: The cause of death was a stroke: https://nutrition.utexas.edu/about-us/memoriam https://nutrition.utexas.edu/about-us/memoriam
sigmoid10 9mo ago
The thing is, this is not really new. People have been pushing this metabolic theory of cancer for a long time now and even used it to propose things like cold therapy or ketogenic diets as a treatment option, despite the fact that we have very little evidence that any of this stuff really works. It is still refreshing to see people target cancer from a theory-first standpoint instead of the usual empirical tactics, but the theoretical foundation of cancer science simply isn't that good. Clinicians also aren't slow to adapt or scared to experiment with these new approaches, because everyone would jump immediately on those fancy low-invasive supplement treatments when the alternative is certain death. But you can't game the final survivability statistics, now matter how reasonable your theory sounds or how well founded it is.
- adrian_b 9mo ago
  I do not remember "evidence that any of this stuff really works" about curing an existing cancer, but there was rather strong evidence in large-scale studies with various lab animals, in which a mutagen agent created tumors when they were fed normally, but no tumors appeared when they were malnourished, either by eating a reduced amount of protein, or by eating the normal amount of protein, but with a bad amino-acid profile. Both forms of malnutrition would diminish the capacity of synthesizing proteins, which would affect mainly a fast-growing organ, like the tumors. Presumably this slowed down the growth of the tumors, allowing time for the immune system to react and suppress them in their incipient form. Unfortunately, malnutrition as a prophylactic measure does not really work, as it enhances the risk of other diseases, even if it might lower the risk of cancer. The method described in the parent article might have better chances, but it seems likely to work only with a cancer that has been discovered very early.
  - sigmoid10 9mo ago
    Yes, this is exactly what theory-first approaches look like. And no, there is no data that any of this really works in humans. If it was about curing cancer in mice that were genetically engineered to have cancer in the first place, of course we'd already be there. But it isn't and we aren't.

_yb2s 9mo ago

This is fascinating and sounds really promising. 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?

OutOfHere 9mo ago
The problem with chronic cold exposure is that it makes one very hungry, a lot hungrier than usual, with the compensatory calorie consumption risking negating the intended benefit.
- _yb2s 9mo ago
  If white fat converts to beige fat, it is going to be burning a lot more calories, so you ultimately would have to eat more to maintain a stable body weight. It’s not clear to me that this would negate the benefit. If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from calorie restriction. A quick search shows that there does seem to be an anti cancer therapeutic benefit from calorie restriction, so this seems at least plausible. So this raises the research question of if increasing calorie intake to keep weight stable completely negates the anti-cancer benefits of increased beige fat or not. I’m curious if that has been investigated yet.
  - bratwurst3000 9mo ago
    in all respect sorry this is wrong. this is a broad misinformation. It can enhance but also supresse cancer dependig of soo much we dont know yet enough to know if fasting is beneficial or dangerous. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cam4.5577 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cam4.5577 edit:// and the article has imho nothinh to do with autophagy. Its about beige fat cells eating stuff away from cancer not autophagy wich happened in the innercell. And if you go into caloric deficit you could burn away those beige fat cells that "heal" the cancer.

OutOfHere 9mo ago

[flagged]

gavinray 9mo ago
> I can't wait to be downvoted for sharing something useful, which pretty much is par for the course on this site, i.e. altogether shallow people voting only on the basis of what they already believe in. I think you're getting downvoted more on the basis of making claims without providing credible evidence. If you really wanted to fend off the downvotes, I probably would have linked at least a handful of well-designed studies with outcomes supporting your claims. Also, Occam's Razor would suggest that if it truly worked, surely the very smart people trying to solve this problem would have known about + adopted it.
- OutOfHere 9mo ago
  > Also, Occam's Razor would suggest that if it truly worked, surely the very smart people trying to solve this problem would have known about + adopted it. Please save me from such nonsense. Only naive people believe that. Informed people know that nothing is pursued by big corporations if there isn't big money in it. And there isn't since it's a cheap common product produced around the world. As a further example, mRNA tech was intentionally rejected, ignored, and not developed for decades. Meanwhile, the false beta-amyloid theory of Alzheimers was purused for over a decade even though it was very clear informed people that it's a dumb theory. People are not as smart as you think they are, not even close. As for the studies, PMID 27980600 and DOI 10.1016/j.hermed.2024.100875 are a fair start, although the latter is paywalled.
sroussey 9mo ago
People don’t like claims with no source. This is not Reddit. For sources: Overview of studies, including human: https://www.xiahepublishing.com/m/2835-6357/FIM-2024-00006 https://www.xiahepublishing.com/m/2835-6357/FIM-2024-00006 NIH: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21889885/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21889885/ Most recent I could find: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51617171_Tiliroside_a_glycosidic_flavonoid_ameliorates_obesity-induced_metabolic_disorders_via_activation_of_adiponectin_signaling_followed_by_enhancement_of_fatty_acid_oxidation_in_liver_and_skeletal_muscle_i https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51617171_Tiliroside...

edwardtay 9mo ago

The metabolic competition angle is fascinating - it's elegant how this leverages the body's own resource allocation rather than trying to poison cancer cells directly. 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.

Dumblydorr 9mo ago
It’s CRISPR and injection changing their fat cells, not cold exposure. They theorized something in cold exposure modulated energy and fat, they found genes and tested which one works best via crispr, the ucp1

semessier 9mo ago

triggering the cold signal artificially might be an approach

fnord77 9mo ago

> implanted in mice every time

mettamage 9mo ago

For the curious among us, here are articles related to cold exposure in mice and cancer [1, 2, 3]. I briefly skimmed it but seems like a somewhat plausible idea in the realm of: if it doesn’t hurt you, it can perhaps benefit you. 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 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05030-3 [2] https://news.ki.se/cool-room-temperature-inhibited-cancer-growth-in-mice https://news.ki.se/cool-room-temperature-inhibited-cancer-gr... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01284-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01284-5 [4] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322174111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322174111

manmal 9mo ago
Why would someone do this to themselves? Such a trip doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. Wouldn’t long term sauna have similar effects and be way less straining on the cardiovascular system?
- mettamage 9mo ago
  Don't know, haven't looked into it. Do you have any sources I could start reading on?

cathyreisenwitz 9mo ago

"Fat cells have many advantages... They are easy to obtain from patients." LOL. Also, we'll see if that's still true once everyone is on Ozempic.