‘It’s not just hair’

When their school pickup routine changed, the four Paxman children knew something was terribly wrong. As they walked through the front door, 14-year-old Claire spotted the breast cancer pamphlet on the living room table, and their instincts proved correct.

At home, Sue and Glenn Paxman delivered the devastating news of Sue’s breast cancer diagnosis with remarkable composure to Claire, eldest son Curtis, and 10-year-old twins Richard and James.

The four Paxman siblings: Richard, James, Curtis, and Claire.

Sue Paxman stood out as much for her big personality as her striking, curly hair – a trait she shared with her daughter. Her husband, Glenn, recalls the first time Sue cried during her cancer treatment. It was the morning she woke up with most of her hair left behind on her pillow. He realized that the scalp cooling she’d been offered, a manual and laborious process, simply wasn’t good enough.

“She was a very vibrant, energetic woman, so you wouldn't ever think she was unwell, even through treatment,” recalls her son, Richard. “I think the first time you start to realize someone is unwell is when they start to lose their hair.”

Weeks into chemotherapy, mother and daughter stood together before the bathroom vanity lights, sharing the heartbreak of cutting away those beautiful curls.

The family scissors Claire used to cut off her mother’s hair when Sue’s treatment-induced hair loss began.

“On that day she said to me, 'Claire, you've got to cut it off for me,’” recalls Claire. “I've actually got the scissors here, from the kitchen drawer. The tears were streaming down both of our faces, just like millions of people all over who have this experience.”

Sue's heartbreak sparked in Glenn an unwavering determination to spare other families from this particular anguish.

It was the genesis of the Paxman Scalp Cooling system.

Building a better way

Treatment-induced hair loss has become one of the hallmarks of the cancer experience, affecting approximately 65% of patients receiving chemotherapy. The emotional toll of this loss can be immeasurable.

At the time, Sue had been offered a rudimentary form of scalp cooling—an early and largely ineffective method that attempted to reduce hair loss by blowing cold air onto the scalp. Glenn, whose father, Eric Paxman, actually invented the first type of ice bank beer cooler back in the 1950s, looked at the device and recognized its shortcomings.

“Dad was determined to make something that actually worked,” Claire says.

As a family, the Paxmans are innovators in drinks dispense: recooling liquids, refrigeration.

“I thought, ‘If this doesn’t have to happen, we have to find a way,'" Glenn says. “It was a bold statement at the time, but this is not a vanity product. This is a medical device that has such a big impact when it works.”

Building on decades of family expertise in refrigeration technology, Glenn approached his brother Neil to help create a new device. It took about four years to bring it to life.

Neil (left) and Glenn Paxman (right) worked together to develop the first prototype of the Paxman Scalp Cooling system. Two of Glenn’s children, Rich and Claire (center), carry on the family legacy at the company.

The root of hair loss

Any method of scalp cooling is about vasoconstriction — making blood vessels tighten so that less blood flow and less chemotherapy drugs reach the hair follicle. Manual systems have a host of challenges: They can be really cold or painful for patients, they sometimes can't get to the right temperature, they struggle maintaining that temperature, and the physical time and labor for clinical staff to change the gel caps into and out of the freezer at specific intervals.

Glenn’s concept was simple: “You circulate beer through a refrigerated line system to keep it at a steady temperature, surely we can do that with a machine and a cap that doesn't need to be changed.”

Over the next decades, he made inroads with the public health system in the U.K., where the system has been in use for decades and now is in 99% of public hospitals there.

“Based on our success in the U.K., we convinced the FDA to allow us to start clinical trials,” says Rich.

That meant setting up the gold standard of evidence for a medical intervention – the randomized controlled trial. The company partnered with Baylor College of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, Memorial Sloan Kettering and US Oncology Network to run the multi-site study.

A multi-site effort brought Paxman Scalp Cooling to the U.S. market through a rigorous randomized controlled trial that resulted in FDA approval of the device as a side-effect management therapy in 2017.

Unlike the earlier manual methods, the Paxman system automated the scalp cooling process, ensuring consistent temperatures and a more comfortable experience for patients. More importantly, it worked—their clinical studies showed that 53% of patients experienced minimal hair loss.

“It was a huge lift for such a small company,” says Rich. “We presented at SABCS [the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium] in 2016, and with this breakthrough data, people started to take this new version of the technology seriously.”

It was a turning point with the FDA, and the company secured FDA clearance of the system in 2017 as an approved side-effect management intervention.

Changing minds and hearts

Expanding into the American healthcare market, the company had to overcome skepticism of those old methods.

Karin Buck, who leads Paxman's U.S. team, recalls the resistance she often faced in the early days—skeptics who dismissed the technology as a cosmetic indulgence. But time, patient stories, and data changed minds.

One particularly memorable moment came when a previously skeptical physician returned to the Paxman booth at a medical conference to apologize. He had seen firsthand how the system helped one of his patients—a young mother with stage IIIB cancer—retain not just her hair, but her sense of control and dignity during an overwhelming time.

But the Paxman family didn’t stop at innovation alone. Driven by the desire to make scalp cooling accessible for all, they focused on expanding insurance coverage in the United States. Their efforts paid off in 2023, when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began covering the procedure as a side-effect management therapy, paving the way for private insurers to follow. A generous patient assistance program and partnerships with nonprofits across the US help ensure that even those without coverage could receive the treatment free of charge. When determining the eligibility for financial assistance, Rich insisted on raising the income threshold far beyond industry norms—making the treatment accessible even for middle-income families.

On a mission

Today, nearly 900 hospitals across the U.S. offer Paxman’s scalp cooling technology. Unlike typical medical device companies, Paxman doesn’t operate on sales goals or commissions. Their patient-first ethos runs through every part of the organization.

For Paxman Scalp Cooling, this progress wouldn’t have been possible without the hardworking, dedicated team who stood behind every breakthrough. Their expertise, persistence, and belief in the mission have transformed Glenn’s vision into a life-changing reality for patients around the world.

Much of the Paxman Scalp Cooling team both in the U.K. and the U.S. have a personal investment in bringing this technology to patients who want to prevent the trauma of chemotherapy-induced hair loss.

Glenn, now semi-retired from day-to-day operations, reflects with pride on the children he raised with Sue.

“Sue would have been very, very proud of them,” he said. After her death, Glenn found love again with his wife, Antoinette, who has been a steady support through the family’s continued efforts to serve the breast cancer community.

Together, the family remains grounded in carrying Sue’s legacy forward. For Claire, every daughter they help is a reminder of what she went through—and what others no longer have to. For Rich, every patient interaction is a gut check—a moment that reaffirms the long hours and hard decisions.

“I'd have my mum back in a heartbeat, and I'm sure I'd find something else to do for work,” Rich says. “But this is a way where every single patient that it treats, it's touched my mum at some point. Every single patient who is diagnosed with cancer and who has to have chemotherapy that causes hair loss should have access to this treatment, and that is what drives myself and my colleagues to keep pushing and pushing. That is why we exist.”

Sue and Glenn’s son Rich now serves as CEO of Paxman Scalp Cooling, driven by his mom’s legacy.

And for Glenn, what began on a devastating morning more than 30 years ago has grown into a global effort to bring that choice to cancer patients around the world.

“If Sue hadn’t lost her hair, and I hadn’t done something about it, we wouldn’t be here,” Glenn says.

Patients remain at the absolute center of their work—because their own family's journey taught them an essential truth: It's never just about hair.