Two People Used AI to Treat Cancer When Institutions Couldn't. Both Worked.

A tech CEO used AI to direct his own cancer treatment into remission. A developer used AI to design an mRNA vaccine for his dog's cancer. Both bypassed institutional gatekeeping.

Two People Used AI to Treat Cancer When Institutions Couldn't. Both Worked. A tech CEO used AI to direct his own cancer treatment into remission. A developer used AI to design an mRNA vaccine for his dog's cancer. Both bypassed institutional gatekeeping. Aaron Rafferty March 28, 2026 Key Takeaways: GitLab co-founder Sid Sijbrandij used AI to self-direct a personalized cancer treatment protocol after standard care failed for his recurring osteosarcoma, and is now in remission. Developer Paul Conyngham used genetic algorithms and AI tools to screen millions of compounds and design a custom mRNA vaccine for his dog Rosie's aggressive cancer, shrinking her tumors. Sam Altman called Conyngham's work "amazing" and said it should be a company, but the bottleneck is paperwork, not science. Two stories surfaced this week that share a pattern. In both, a person facing cancer turned to AI when institutional medicine ran out of options. In both, AI delivered results the institutions had not. Sid Sijbrandij , co-founder of GitLab, faced recurring osteosarcoma. Standard care failed. He self-directed a protocol using AI for deep research, maximal diagnostics, repurposed drugs, and personalized treatment decisions. He published his entire process, raw data and treatment deck included, publicly. His cancer is currently in remission. Paul Conyngham's dog Rosie had aggressive cancer. He used genetic algorithms to screen millions of compounds, ChatGPT to build his research pipeline, Gemini for genetic construct design, and Grok for validation. He worked from 300GB of sequencing data to design a custom mRNA vaccine . When university ethics approval would have taken until mid-2026, he drove to an approved lab and got the injection done. Rosie's tumors shrank. One new