alt Hacker News> 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.
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__natty__ • today at 4:41 PM
And he was only 35. Rest in peace.
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.