Maximal Cancer Diagnostics with Sid Sijbrandij and Jacob Stern

<p>In 2024, Sid Sijbrandij got the news that no cancer patient wants to hear: his tumor was back and his doctors told him they had nothing left to offer. </p><p></p><p>Sid, a tech entrepreneur who up until that point had been running his company, GitLab, went all in, doing as much testing and as many treatments as he could. </p><p></p><p>It seems to have worked. Moreover, Sid’s team thinks they’ve been able to figure out what went right, thanks to heaps of molecular data they’ve collected, including single-cell sequencing data.</p><p></p><p>“It's very difficult, if not impossible, to do causative work in an N-of-1 study, but because we have this longitudinal sampling over the course of Sid's case, we can start to build a mechanistic hypothesis,” said Jacob Stern, a single-cell data expert on Sid's team and veteran of 10x Genomics. “Which seems to be that there was a bunch of combination immunotherapy that helped to rev up the immune system over the course of 2024.”</p><p></p><p>Join Sid, Jacob, and I as we discuss the "maximal diagnostics” approach and how Sid plans to bring it to other patients who find themselves in a similar situation.During our chat, Sid mentions that he got a treatment from a company started by a friend he made at the Y Combinator startup accelerator. That company is <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.shasqi.com/leadership" target="_blank">Shasqi</a>, founded by José Oneto.</p><p></p><p>To see a timeline of Sid’s experience and all the data he and his team collected diagnosing and treating his disease check out <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://osteosarc.com" target="_blank">osteosarc.com</a>.</p><p></p><p>Sid has also written about his experience on his personal <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://sijbrandij.substack.com/p/im-going-founder-mode-on-my-cancer" target="_blank">Substack.</a></p><p></p><p>For more information about Sid’s policy proposals, check out slide 17 of his embedded PowerPoint at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://sytse.com/cancer/" target="_blank">https://sytse.com/cancer/</a></p><p></p><p>For more information about the cancer “playbooks” offered by the Sijbrandij Foundation’s Future of Cancer Care Today program, see:</p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://sijbrandijfoundation.org/fcct" target="_blank">https://sijbrandijfoundation.org/fcct</a></p><p>More information about the companies Sid is investing in to bring aspects of his maximal diagnostics approach to market is at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://Evenone.ventures" target="_blank">Evenone.ventures</a>.</p>