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Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

• looneysquash 6mo ago
  I've only interacted with him a couple of times, years ago, but he was very helpful and accepted my MR.
• anderber 6mo ago
  That's pretty amazing. I believe he's also a founder/investor in Kilo Code which I use and really like.
• twostorytower 6mo ago
  Really awesome that he was able to do this and give back, but none of this would have been possible without his unfathomable wealth and access.
  • yieldcrv 6mo ago
    Feeling inspired?
    • croes 6mo ago
      It’s more like I hope more bad things happen to rich and powerful people so they start doing something against it. As long as it happens to ordinary people most of then hardly care. Reminds me of the GOP who was against stem cell treatments until Reagan got Alzheimer‘s
  • rvz 6mo ago
    > ...but none of this would have been possible without his unfathomable wealth and access. ? What's that supposed to mean? Is that bad? You can do the same thing as he did, what's stopping you?
    • croes 6mo ago
      Wealth is mostly based on either luck and more often heritage.
      • rvz 6mo ago
        Not only Sid didn't come from any of those backgrounds, neither did the founder of Freshworks who literally started his company based on reading a hacker news comment. [0] So I only see more excuses here. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28336815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28336815
        • croes 6mo ago
          So it was luck
          • rvz 6mo ago
            Nope. He applied to YC and took that risk and already knew how to make money. You miss 100% of the shots if you do. not. try.
            • croes 6mo ago
              But you don’t hit 100% if you try. That’s where the luck part comes into play. Right time, right place
              • rvz 6mo ago
                > But you don’t hit 100% if you try. That’s where the luck part comes into play. Nope. Sid just knows how to make money and that's him being more than 'lucky' with his experience and marketing GitLab right here which you could have done that as well. > Right time, right place Just use Sid's story as motivation for yourself.
    • TobTobXX 6mo ago
      wealth and access that is merely fathomable
  • Noumenon72 6mo ago
    That's not a "but". Because he developed wealth and access, this is possible for one person when before it wasn't possible for anyone. This is how societies developed everything from refined sugar to rockets, as they passed various thresholds where individuals could afford to try things out.
  • perch56 6mo ago
    According to some online sources his total wealth is under $3B. Hardly ‘unfathomable wealth’ IMO. Sure, billionaire territory but nowhere near the ultra-wealthy.
    • amazingamazing 6mo ago
      3 billion is ultra wealthy, you can't be serious.
      • perch56 6mo ago
        It’s entry-level billionaires club. The top 10 each hold $100B–$300B+, so the wealth distribution is extraordinarily skewed even within billionaires themselves. Musk is hundreds of times richer. Hardly obscenely rich.
        • amazingamazing 6mo ago
          I must be talking to AI
          • perch56 6mo ago
            This AI recommends you visualize inequality at scale and see the difference between 1B vs 300B. https://youtu.be/c7sr46hxVM4 https://youtu.be/c7sr46hxVM4
            • amazingamazing 6mo ago
              The percentile ranking increase is greater between median human and 1B compared to 1B and 300B. Bad AI
        • tock 6mo ago
          It's entry-level obscenely rich club.
    • chaps 6mo ago
      Friend, $3B is unfathomable wealth for an individual.
  • junofan 6mo ago
    There are grad students babying organoids right now. Saturday morning. If you can work a pipette you can do this.
  • esafak 6mo ago
    This is an excellent use of his wealth and skills. Much better than Steve Jobs' response. I remember reading a similar article about a (cancer?) patient who used 3D printing for his personalized cure.
  • fragmede 6mo ago
    And all of a sudden, I was bestowed with the greed to acquire more money than I can spend in a single lifetime. If I get cancer, I'd rather be rich and be able to do stuff like that, rather than die quietly.
• Axoncode 6mo ago
  I hope he will feel better.
• ashwinnair99 6mo ago
  Most people slow down when something like this hits. Starting companies is a very specific way of refusing to.
• asim 6mo ago
  Kudos to Sid for trying it and hopefully it benefits others in the long run. Not everyone has the money, will or commitment to do this. My own father died with a battle of myeloma, a blood and bone marrow cancer, after 2 years, it wasn't the disease specifically that got him, it was the secondary conditions that caused irregular heart rhythm and eventually one day it stopped and no one was there to help. 2 stem cell transplants, rounds of chemo, almost full failure of kidneys. The cancer did its job. Ultimately what I'm saying, the medicine gives us time, but no one beats death. Maybe the treatment gives us time to come to terms with that, hopefully my dad did. I was in total denial. Anyway good luck to you Sid. All the best to all the cancer survivors out there, and to the loved ones who lost them.
• grokcodec 6mo ago
  https://time.com/7213490/why-are-young-people-getting-cancer/ https://time.com/7213490/why-are-young-people-getting-cancer...
• storus 6mo ago
  Maybe it's time for him to give the metabolic cancer theory a go and try to bump up his mitochondrial function as much as possible? It's practically untestable due to science testing all compounds in isolation instead of a cocktail over longer period of time that can't be properly controlled even if it might be true. Every single cancer cell has a damaged mitochondria and often switching it properly on leads to cancer cell's apoptosis. He should also take desloratadine as some Swedish hospital observational study showed a significantly increased survivability on all tumor types with it. Some people had success with the combination of DCA, R-ALA, B1 HCl megadoses >2g, CoQ10 + PQQ, glucosidic astaxanthin, nattokinase/serrapeptase/lumbrokinase, low-dose aspirin, pancreatic enzymes and lactoferrin, with complete removal of fructose from the diet (as the cancer explosion can be correlated with years when fructose started getting introduced into diet in large quantities).
  • azinman2 6mo ago
    You said it’s untestable but then said a Swedish hospital did a study on it? I don’t see why things can’t be tested over a long term. There are many such studies.
    • storus 6mo ago
      Swedish hospital study was about desloratidine: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33550204/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33550204/ Metabolic theory of cancer is untestable in practice as you can't control all variables over long time.
• menno-sh 6mo ago
  There's a crazy story in here where Sytse invested in a click chemistry cancer research startup (Shasqi) in 2017 and ends up becoming a customer six years later. I sincerely hope it works out for him.
  • bob_theslob646 6mo ago
    It's mentioned in the slide deck on the url linked. I highly recommend clicking through all the slides. It's absolutely one of the most fascinating decks I've come across. His sheer will to want live is impressive and inspiring.
  • HorizonXP 6mo ago
    Also helps we were all batchmates in W15, so the serendipity is even higher.
    • sytse 6mo ago
      Yes, it felt like the universe provided in this case. I invest in my batch mate. We end up becoming best friends, our wifes become best friends. Biotech VCs are afraid click chemistry isn't hot enough. I lead multiple rounds and become the biggest investor and it becomes my biggest investment. The year I get cancer click-chemistry wins a Nobel prize. And I become a patient. Unbelievable.
  • swyx 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    • fallat 6mo ago
      or the top 1% of value holders means your connection to other holders is vastly smaller than the other 99%. also highly likely to get cancer no matter who you are. i think the odds are better than people think, was just a matter of time regardless of that observation: i am glad it's good people working with good people on these problems!
  • nobodybelievesu 6mo ago
• fumeux_fume 6mo ago
  The linked post about his treatment is basically a vanity article; low in useful information, but high in vague assertions and platitudes. There's also a link to a post griping about the red tape someone experienced while trying to self-treat their dog's cancer that's weird. I clearly live in a different world than these people.
  • bob_theslob646 6mo ago
    Here is a video if you want more detail. https://forum.openai.com/public/videos/event-replay-from-terminal-to-turnaround-how-gitlabs-co-founder-leveraged-chatgpt-in-his-cancer-fight-2026-03-18 https://forum.openai.com/public/videos/event-replay-from-ter... "Event Replay: From Terminal to Turnaround: How GitLab’s Co-Founder Leveraged ChatGPT in His Cancer Fight"
  • dekhn 6mo ago
    This is a common trope in the tech field- successful tech person who is good at tech gets disease and wants to help cure it. It's easy to generate a lot of data these days (whole genome sequencing, various tests) but the reality is that turning that data into actionable knowledge is remarkably difficult. Much of the red tape exists to help people avoid making common mistakes that aren't obvious until you've been through the process a number of times (other red tape just exists to gatekeep unnecessarily).
    • inglor_cz 6mo ago
      To be somewhat more optimistic, digging useful connections and correlations from a heap of data is something that AI is really good at. IIRC there is a cancer lab in Vienna, Austria, where they feed genome sequence of a tumor into an AI and it sometimes recommends unexpected-but-efficient treatments.
  • dasil003 6mo ago
    It's wild to me to hear this being spun as vanity, like it's some influencer clickbait or linkedin slop. You could argue anyone posting anything online is driven by vanity, but in this case we're talking about someone who took agency in his own medical outcome, and essentially experimented on himself. Sure it was selfish in the sense that he didn't want to die and he bent all his effort and resources to it, so what? I don't see exercising ones will-to-live in this way being a huge moral gray area. Other commenters are saying why don't we fund more research? Well sure we should do that too, but it's important to recognize that the type of approach he took here only works because it was one individual willing to combine a significant amount of personal effort with his own moral authority to try out risky things on himself. Even with orders of magnitude more funding, you can't ethically do this kind of thing without the consent of the patients, and there's not enough data on these types of approaches to adequately describe the risks to patients if they aren't specifically motivated to lean into the details like this guy did.
• dsign 6mo ago
  When it comes to cancer, there is an awful lot of legacy thinking and "way things are done" taking lives. Starting with the so called "standard of care", which makes patient lose precious treatment windows while they wait for a possible miracle from "first-line drugs" from thirty and forty years ago which frankly are not that good. But it's hard to reform because the fraction of people who ever think about cancer as a problem to be solved is quite small; and it ought to be far larger, given that cancer is the second or even first leading cause of death across much of the world. I wish Elliot Hershberg every success.
  • SoftTalker 6mo ago
    I'm pretty much a pessimest when it comes to fighting cancer. I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field. But I've seen people close to me die of cancer and it seems like the treatement is almost worse than the disease. I agree that the standard first attacks are very crude and have broad systemic side effects and the attitude seems to be "you'll die without this so that doesn't matter." I read some stuff about mRNA treatment a while ago that seemed like it might be promising.
    • pavas 6mo ago
      > I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field. I'm just curious, do you know what the opinions about this stuff are from people that work in these fields, or that have dedicated their lives to it?
      • bashkiddie 6mo ago
        I am guessing: There is an evolutionary "shadow". Genes for getting old and healthy are not selected for, because you get old after having children. Evolution optimizes for the survival of your children. Might be that cancer hits after creating offspring.
• dominotw 6mo ago
  so many of these now. it is so sad and scary. been thinking about prenuvo all the time now but not sure if thats going to help or make me more paranoid.
  • TaupeRanger 6mo ago
    Not really. Osteosarcoma rates have remained very stable for decades. Some young people are getting diagnosed with colon/breast cancer at increasing rates, but most of that comes down to better diagnostics and imagining, catching things at earlier ages.
    • moooo99 6mo ago
      But isn‘t colon cancer in young people primarily an example of rates actually increasing, because young people specifically often get easily dismissed based on their age.
  • arjie 6mo ago
    Before I got my Prenuvo MRI everything online said “don’t do this, man. You’ll find all sorts of things that will worry you that you wouldn’t be worried about if you didn’t do it”. That makes no sense to me. Totally irrational. So I did the scan and saw a bunch of things which had no clinical significance - including the amusing thing that I’m missing the transverse processes on a couple of vertebrae (easily explainable from a motorcycle accident that put me in the ICU). So I moved on, scan done, and with the docs in my family reviewing. But a friend of mine went through a different diagnostic procedure and found things of equal clinical significance and went through a large number of interventions which he didn’t really need it now turns out. And then I understood why people provide this warning. So the first question to ask yourself is which kind of person you are.
    • andrewlacy 6mo ago
      There is a chicken and egg problem with advanced diagnostics like Prenuvo. I’m optimistic that if all disease were to be caught early, (1) the health system would evolve what is standard of care downstream in the working up and treatment of findings and (2) as individuals we would be less likely to overreact in chasing stuff down and feeling anxious. As CEO of Prenuvo, we do our best to contextualize and risk stratify in what is an evolving practice.
• nextos 6mo ago
  Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47550016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47550016
• appstorelottery 6mo ago
  This is the most supremely motivating post I've seen in a long time. I know what it is to be diagnosed with cancer, being rushed to surgery - it's amazing how quickly the medical-industrial complex can move once you've got a diagnosis (at least in Australia). I had a short period of contemplating terminally, because cancer claimed the life of most of my family. Thankfully, after surgery it was gone. To see Sid use his motivation and resources to solve his own problem is the core message (IMHO) of the hacker community. It makes me look at my own problem (Peyronies) in a different light; a disease which has affected my life in ways which cannot be overstated. Yet, all the money in the world right now can't fix Peyronies - yet in reading his journey my mind has been changed about this. His slide title: "I'll talk to anyone, I'll go anywhere, and I can be there anytime" is certainly the mindset! Thanks for posting this - I'm inspired to take similar action for Peyronie's. Anything is possible.
  • elric 6mo ago
    I commend you for speaking openly about Peyronie's, I imagine that isn't always an easy thing to do (or to deal with). Best of luck, and I hope you manage to make progress with it. Effective treatment wouldn't get as much airtime as effectice cancer treatments, but it would certainly have a positive effect on the lives of millions of men.
    • appstorelottery 6mo ago
      You are right on the mark. What triggered me was the slide in Sid's presentation: "Assessing Fibroblast Content of Tumor". Peyronie's is all about Fibroblasts. I actually typed my reply quite a few times, deleting mention of Peyronies and retyping it. It's a shameful condition for me, and I realize that I have to get over this. Peyronie's affects 1% to 20% of men, primarily because it's (if you're anything like me) - is impossible to talk about. Again, you're completely right. Talking about the disease is the first step.
      • girvo 6mo ago
        It’s not quite the same, but I had a frenulectomy done due to severe phimosis leading to pain and bleeding. It was absolutely horrible, and I was shocked at how hush hush we all treat conditions like this. Thankfully there’s a straightforward surgical treatment for it, and I hope that you’re successful on your quest around Peyronie’s!
• parsimo2010 6mo ago
  (slightly sarcastic) So we should give rich people diseases so they are incentivized to fund medical research? Sid seems like a decent person. I'm glad that he's able to push cancer research forward on his own. Hopefully his work will make things better for everyone else with bone cancer. Seems like that is well under way. (and I guess I should recognize that he funded a cancer treatment company years before he knew he had cancer further reinforcing that he's not purely self-interested) I'm a little melancholy that my aunt, who was a millionaire just not a mega-millionaire, didn't have the resources to do this before she died of cancer. She was able to pay for a high standard of care, but couldn't single-handedly fund teams of scientists to work on her case. I know she would have done so if she could, her biggest regret was not being around longer to see her grandkids grow up and she was very driven to watch over her family. It is a little sad that the world's medical research apparatuses couldn't seem to fund this on their own. Not just the US medical system, but Europe and China also don't have better treatments until a rich guy came along. It seems that it's not for a lack of ideas, just that some of these ideas couldn't be funded. Is it that this type of bone cancer is super rare and the cost just isn't worth it? Or are we just under-funding at the level that several ideas with a likely positive ROI aren't able to get funded?
  • melling 6mo ago
    Why can’t we just ask our governments to spend more on research? Want some rich person to donate $100 billion on cancer research? The US government and European governments could find that amount of money every year.
    • declan_roberts 6mo ago
      The United States and world spend huge amounts of money on this, not even to mention the enormous amounts of private research. The takeaway here is getting money into the hands of smarter and more motivated people.
      • light_hue_1 6mo ago
        No we absolutely don't. The US hardly spends anything on research. The entire yearly budget for the National Cancer Institute is $7 billion dollars. To put this in perspective, that's 3 days of funding the DoD. For cancer. That kills well over half a million Americans per year. The takeaway is that we should invest in research rather than letting people die.
• moralestapia 6mo ago
  "maximum diagnostics" Love this! This is the way! And he proved it correct. I remember one time I mentioned this in a casual conversation only to get back very low IQ responses with some fatuous arguments that the tests caused the disease or something. There was this one guy Tomas something (can't remember the last name, a weird one), doesn't matter, what I do remember is how he was desperately trying to explain how more tests led to more diagnoses and that was ... somehow bad? Lmao. Something I've observed, I've lived in Canada/US and Latin America, in the former you have to wait months for a CT scan, in the latter you can get it the same day you need it. If the "third-world" can do it, there's no excuse.
  • universa1 6mo ago
    I am fully on your side, but tests are not 100%: False positives and false negatives. The way out is obviously better tests and not less tests :-)
  • AlBugdy 6mo ago
    [dead]
  • jwardbond 6mo ago
    Could Tomas something have been referring to some of the risks mentioned here [1]? Particularly the overdiagnosis bullet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_screening#Risks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_screening#Risks
• bfbsoundetch 6mo ago
  A very motivating post. What he said “It became my own job to keep myself alive. Nobody else was going to do it for me at this point” really stayed with me. It’s powerful to see someone take that level of responsibility in such a difficult situation. I also appreciate how his ability to fund his own treatment can end up benefiting the broader community. Wishing him the best. Cancer is awful, and it just took one of my professor life just a few months ago.
• kaapipo 6mo ago
  Had the pleasure of meeting him a little over a year ago. A super cool and down-to-earth dude. I hope him all the best.
• vldszn 6mo ago
  Wishing him a speed recovery
• goatlove 6mo ago
  I found another story of using AI for a new vaccine the other day . https://x.com/paul_conyngham/status/2036940410363535823 https://x.com/paul_conyngham/status/2036940410363535823. Its interesting and motivating to see how people are using new technology to save lives regardless of their totally professional background and how informations are useful if you use it the right way. I wish him the best.
• 101008 6mo ago
  This is wonderful but I feel bad for all the people who doesnt have the resources to go through the same. For 99.9% of the population, a diagnostic like his means a really different outcome. I know he is trying to fix this with his investments and companies, but sharing this story could be seen as "boasting"... "I went through this and I survived, while your loved ones wouldn't"
  • necovek 6mo ago
    While that is just a natural reaction to "unfair" world where not everyone gets the same level of access to the best level of care, I'd also say that it's a reminder that money can't and won't solve all problems people are hit with in their lifetimes (or he'd not be facing cancer diagnosis in the first place). This story is of someone with resources putting them to good use to save themselves, but also have that benefit others: medical research is expensive and for good reason restricted, and just like lots of open source was driven by individual's need, so lots of good stuff can come out of this. I suggest to see it that way.
  • ares623 6mo ago
    I agree. It would've been so easy to address that too. Just acknowledge it and be vocal about supporting policies that make it better for others.
    • mgfist 6mo ago
      Oh c'mon. Here's what Sid's done to help others in the process * Started 10 companies to enable access to others * Detailed policy proposals to make this easier process for others * Open sourced the entire process and all of the associated data (25TB) and probably other things I missed. But nah, what would reaaally help is an acknowledgement.
  • renewiltord 6mo ago
    The novel part of his post is the summary of what worked. That information you cannot get except from him. You need his experience. But this extra text you want can be obtained from LLM so if you require this “decoration” on top of information why not simply write yourself Chrome extension that reads page and adds that text to it at the bottom? This will help you not feel bad.
• allpratik 6mo ago
  Wish the best for Sid! My father was unlucky with his TP53 mutation which resulted in AEL and he passed away suddenly. 100% fit to vanishing away straight in 8 months. It was pretty rough for me especially to see how these doctors (most of them but bot all) are so non-experimental in their attitude. Sid is right, Staying alive is our own job and definitely what he is doing will give him and his loved ones enough hope to get through this and sometimes he eventually he will get through.
  • manmal 6mo ago
    I guess experiments will get a doctor sued.
    • sytse 6mo ago
      Certainly hospitals are in the business of minimizing liability while patients would prefer maximum survivability. Those are very different goals.
      • seb1204 6mo ago
        I assume you have been signing legal waivers left right and centre to be able to go through these unique treatments.
        • sytse 6mo ago
          There are lots of waivers but the law prevents you from signing away liability for treatment.
• jnpnj 6mo ago
  I remember steve yegge complaining about using brain and computing so sell clicks. I wonder how many people would do the same as Sid these days.
• hubrix 6mo ago
  This story and the guy curing his dogs cancer leads me to believe what's missing is a jurisdiction that allows people with money to do whatever experiments they want/need to move medicine forward.
  • ares623 6mo ago
    Jesus fucking Christ we are so fucked.
  • nitwit005 6mo ago
    Do you really expect people to let you possibly kill people with medical experiments without even having to file some paperwork? Countries are already trying to attract clinical trials, and that includes streamlining approvals.
  • renewiltord 6mo ago
    I have met people who credibly are able to do some of this at Prospero. The downside to this siting is that the local government are not super reliable but it’s possible.
  • ex-aws-dude 6mo ago
    Sorry but that’s an insane statement
  • ArlenBales 6mo ago
    Paolo Cortazar, is that you?
• sytse 6mo ago
  Thanks for posting this. Happy to answer questions!
  • rvwaveren 6mo ago
    How are you now?
    • sytse 6mo ago
      Doing well. We've not seen the cancer for 10 months (not for lack of trying) and I'm enjoying an international trip for pleasure!
      • rvwaveren 6mo ago
        Glad to hear! After losing my wife to cancer (highly aggressive brain tumor, she only had six weeks), I'm happy that you had the time, resources, strength, will to take cancer by the lurven
        • sebmellen 6mo ago
          Not my thread, but I just wanted to express my condolences for losing your wife. That must be so tough. My wife is my best friend and I cannot imagine how painful it would be for me to lose her or vice versa. I’m praying for you both and hoping that you’ve found peace and comfort since she passed. And I hope that you are doing well. I know she would be proud of you for keeping on!
        • Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
          I am so sorry that you had to go through this tragic event, Here's a hug my friend, that must've been incredibly tough on you, I am not religious but I know that She is in Heaven and watching you from above and she will always be within your heart and all the cherished memories you had together.
        • neal_jones 6mo ago
          Yea, it is incredible to see what could be accomplished with time and technology. Someone in my immediate family had Glioblastoma, it felt like fighting a hurricane.
• markphip 6mo ago
  It was hard to tell how he is doing and whether any of these treatments are working, but I sincerely hope for a good outcome for him. He has always seen like a genuinely good person. Cancer sucks.
  • sytse 6mo ago
    Thank you! I've been cancer free for 10 months now. If you're curious please see https://osteosarc.com/timeline/ https://osteosarc.com/timeline/ > MRD > Personalis.
• dangus 6mo ago
  Sounds like some lame ass tech founder bullshit if I’ll be honest. If I had cancer the last think I’d be thinking would be to make a slide deck about it. Can these robot people come back down to earth and have a genuine human experience for a chance? Not everything has to be framed in the view of a startup company or a data analysis exercise. Maybe focus on spending time with your family and friends? If they still like you after years of being an insufferable tech bro.
  • justin 6mo ago
    Who hurt you?
    • dangus 6mo ago
      Tech bros who are taking my job with AI and trying to fuck up the world for profit?
  • arjie 6mo ago
    He’s been public that he’s ten months clear now. Some prefer to accept undesirable circumstances. Others prefer to oppose them. He’s one of the latter. A little paraphrase of Dylan Thomas’ work here is something I’m fond of: Do not go gentle into that good night Rage, rage against the dying of the light And if he’s successful, which hopefully now he has a much better chance of, there are all these new medical results out that are useful. As an example, a close friend is using one of the personalized medicine companies that sytse’s “CEO of care” has invested in to diagnose a persistent debilitating condition with no specific cause. Or to quote someone else: All progress depends on the unreasonable man.
    • dangus 6mo ago
      That’s so cool.
  • z0r 6mo ago
    If you can cure a cancer by framing it as a data analysis exercise that doesn't seem to be a bad thing.
• SilentM68 6mo ago
  He is lucky to have the resources and determination to start his own companies and tackle the problem himself. I wish the majority of tech bros would act in a similar fashion. The sad truth is, that in most countries, health systems do not allocate sufficient resources or financial support to doctors to correctly diagnose medical conditions accurately as it is not in their economic, interest to do so.
• CommenterPerson 6mo ago
  Hmmm .. where have we heard this story before? Tech bro tries alternative treatments for cancer .. somebody at Apple? I wish him all the best and good luck. Maybe in 50, 100 years we'll have more definitive cures for cancer. Till then it's mostly slash, burn and poison, unfortunately.
• plasma 6mo ago
  I think you’d find Dr. Richard Scolyer’s story really relatable. He’s an Australian cancer expert who, along with his colleague, is using himself as "patient zero" for a world-first treatment for his own brain cancer. They’re basically doing the research and the treatment in parallel to find a new way forward: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-30/dr-richard-scolyer-speaks-on-his-fight-with-brain-cancer/105953964 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-30/dr-richard-scolyer-sp...
  • archon810 6mo ago
    Unfortunately, I found this from 12 days ago https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15655909/Dr-Richard-Scolyer-brain-cancer-battle.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15655909/Dr-Richard.... Glioblastoma is a horrible disease.
    • tootie 6mo ago
      3 years is already beating the odds with a stage 4 glioblastoma. It's one of the worst
  • binsquare 6mo ago
    I found his story to give my mom hope when her cancer had metastasized to her brain in 2025. Cancer cells in the brain are in a nutrition rich environment for growth and at the same time dangerous for treatment for removal and to prevent growth. The expected 5 year life expectancy is less than 5%. Dr. Richard Scolyer had been diagnosed at 2023 and is still with us today. I hope he succeeds in his work.
• JohnTHaller 6mo ago
  Love seeing Sid posting about this and taking the initiative he has. I wish I'd had the resources and time (and abilities of Sid) when my Dad got ALS considering the relatively poor state of ALS treatments.
• andybak 6mo ago
  Took me a while to parse the title
• dbcooper 6mo ago
  For those interested in radioligand therapy against FAP antigen expressing cancer, Ratio Therapeutics is recruiting for a Phase 1/2 Open-label Study (NCT07156565). Eligibility requires history of relapse and refractory soft tissue sarcoma. Recruiting in US and Canada. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07156565?tab=researcher#recruitment-information https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07156565?tab=researcher#...
• jacquesm 6mo ago
  Sytse is one of a kind, not a doubt about it.
• greekrich92 6mo ago
  Mountainhead was a documentary. "Bureaucracy" isn't blocking new and better treatments, privatized healthcare and research is.
• hardwaresofton 6mo ago
  Incredibly badass. This is the best news I’ve read all year — world is better with Sid in it.
• A04eArchitect 6mo ago
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• dschol 6mo ago
  I’m grateful to Sid for what he’s doing—his companies are helping me battle my cancer. I hope more tech entrepreneurs will tackle healthcare and medicine like he is.
• cancerisfake 6mo ago
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• replwoacause 6mo ago
  This man is incredible. I wish I was 10% as smart, resilient, resourceful and determined as he is. Truly amazing stuff.
  • agluszak 6mo ago
    I'm pretty sure you already are. He's just rich.
    • ianm218 6mo ago
      I don't really understand this comment - most people are not this resourceful within the constraints of their own lives.
• tsoukase 6mo ago
  Amazing. When motivation meets innovation this is the result. Although a doctor, I cannot follow all the mechanisms. Cancer is a hard problem from the ground up (biology until engineering). You get ill and well multiple times before you or it wins. And the known therapy modalities remain the same since 2500 years (surgery, toxin, burn). Genetics failed loudly in this field. It's all statistics, prevention and luck. Hope all well to the guy.
• thumbsup-_- 6mo ago
  The article said he gathered information and that cancer is a disease of information and in next para that the cancer is in remission. How? Did I miss something? Did cancer got scared of the massive google doc? Just share how if you have found a treatment and if you truly care about people and the world. Just Share
• sungam 6mo ago
  This is fantastic and I would do something similar if I had the same resources. Whole genome sequencing and single cell sequencing are actually surprisingly inexpensive (compared to the cost of almost any cancer treatment) and there is a good argument that we should do this by default for any type of cancer for which there are not effective treatments. I would encourage all patients to learn as much as possible about their own diagnosis. There may be clinical trials available in another centre that your clinician is not aware of or tumour-agnostic trials that target specific mutations that are present in a range of different cancers. There is a good argument for allowing patients to try experimental treatments once standard treatments are exhausted. The provider liability issues could easily be solved by legislation. A bigger issue is that there will always be people who want to exploit vulnerable cancer patients by charging exorbitant amounts for plausible-sounding treatments which have no evidence base. As an individual trying multiple experimental treatments at once is the logical approach if there is no other option. However it will not be possible to know which of these is effective and which have caused side effects so to develop more effective treatments we do need structured and carefully controlled clinical trials. Unfortunately there is a huge regulatory burden for any kind of clinical trial at present and this should be massively streamlined for cancer patients where even if the treatments cause harm the alternative is death.
• rurban 6mo ago
  Does the HN title make any sense? What should the "by founding companies" mean?
  • tennysont 6mo ago
    He invested in one company that fights cancer. That company later helped him fight his cancer. Afterwards, he founded new companies that fight cancer. The headline refers to the new companies (but most of the comments here are about his cancer battle). It makes sense after you understand, but I had to read the headline several times before it parsed.
• mergeshield 6mo ago
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• agluszak 6mo ago
  Keeping you alive should be the job of public, free healthcare and state-funded research.
• Jamesbeam 6mo ago
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• cocothem 6mo ago
  Question - do you need doctors to stamp your plans, prescribe treatments or are you allowed to try anything you decide to?
• firekey_browser 6mo ago
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• coatmatter 6mo ago
  > Happy to answer questions! Are you aware that SARS-CoV-2 is oncogenic, and that repeat exposure increases risk?
• deleted 6mo ago
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• seanparsons 6mo ago
  Good luck to him, fuck cancer.
• pantsonfire2 6mo ago
  This guy is a liar. He doesn’t have “cancer”
• pantsonfire2 6mo ago
  Who does a cancer AMA?? Insufferable idiots. Gofundme coming next
• 0xkilroywashere 6mo ago
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• ctdinjeu6 6mo ago
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• lmaoreally 6mo ago
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• jenniferpenaNP 6mo ago
  Sid, it’s truly a privilege to work alongside you on this cancer journey. Your innovation and transparency around all things helps pave the way for others in a way like I’ve never seen in 25+ years of healthcare.
  • nobodybelievesu 6mo ago
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• nunez 6mo ago
  This is one of the most punk rock things humanly possible. "F** the doctors; I'll fix the cancer myself!" Gigantic respect, and massive congrats to being right! Good on you, Mr. GitLab!
• Andrew_McCarron 6mo ago
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• gaia888 6mo ago
  Thanks for posting this <3
• lofaszvanitt 6mo ago
  I have a conspiracy theory that people who are overachievers and/or somehow thorns in the side of certain interests get these hard to or borderline incurable illnessess to move them out of the way. Hope I'm wrong...