Molecular biologist here :) This article is almost certainly referring to a really interesting phenomenon which is that whales live very long lives and yet almost never get cancer. Scientists believe it has something to do with a protein that they have which helps to repair DNA breaks (which cause mutations) and reduces genomic instability. The protein is called Cold Inducible RNA-Binding Protein or CIRBP for short, and humans actually make it too. The difference is that Bowhead whales’ cells make a LOT more of it and they can live for 200 years.

This is an active area of research, but scientists have seen that when we measure how much CIRBP is being made in cancerous tissues, not all types of cancer tell us the same story about its role.

Results suggest that it acts as an oncogene (more CIRBP=more cancer) in lung, prostate, liver and bladder tissue, because it actually stabilizes the cancer cells’ genomes 🤦‍♂️

However in pancreatic cancer, results suggest that it plays a role in tumor suppression (more CIRBP= better chance of survival) 👍

Also, there’s some recent work showing that its presence may stabilize pro-inflammatory cytokines and prolong inflammation, and a clinical trial in 2025 found that in triple negative breast cancer, patients with high levels of CIRBP had nearly twice the mortality risk compared to those with lower levels.

There are many proteins that play different roles depending on context, but together these indicate that we need a more complete understanding of what decides how much CIRBP to make, and why its behavior changes across different environments. So as a drug target, the hype is unwarranted at the moment. But in the near future, these measurements of mortality risk and CIRBP levels in different tissues could help doctors predict survival outcomes in their patients.