03/09/2026
After seven years of fighting cancer… ZERO circulating cancer stem cells.
This one is huge.
This patient has been dealing with prostate cancer for around seven years.
Years of aggressive treatment.
Years of appointments and interventions.
Around $2 million spent on his care.
Cancer — and treating cancer — has consumed an enormous part of his life.
When we met, one of the questions I wanted us to answer wasn’t:
“What else can we do?”
It was:
“How will we know when we’ve done enough?”
Because after years of treatment, continuing to fight can become its own form of safety.
Doing something feels safe.
Stopping feels terrifying.
So rather than continuing to treat a disease based purely on the fear that something might remain, we tested.
His MAINTRAC test still detected a small population of circulating EpCAM-positive potential tumour cells.
But when those cells were cultured to look for circulating cancer stem cells capable of clonal expansion…
ZERO.
No growth of circulating cancer stem cells was detected.
That doesn’t mean one test declares someone cured.
It doesn’t mean monitoring stops. We’ll be repeating the test and watching carefully.
But for the first time in years, we have objective information that allows us to ask whether the intensity of treatment still matches the evidence of disease.
And perhaps begin doing something incredibly important:
Giving this man his life back.
Because sometimes testing tells us we need to do more.
But it should also help us recognise when it may be appropriate to start doing less.
There are two freedoms worth working towards in cancer care:
Freedom from disease.
And eventually…
freedom from having to live every day as though you still have it.
After seven years of fighting, perhaps the next chapter isn’t about fighting harder.
Perhaps it’s about carefully finding his way back to living.
