The fittest founder in the room got cancer. Here’s how he used AI to fight back.

Conno Christou doesn’t depart issues to likelihood. He tracks his sleep with a Whoop band, cross-references it with an Oura ring, and will get almost 100 biomarkers checked yearly. He had been doing the annual bloodwork for 4 consecutive years, following the protocols of longevity researchers like Peter Attia and Rhonda Patrick. He was optimizing his dietary supplements, his circadian rhythm, his protein consumption.

At 35, constructing his second firm, he was as dialed-in on the newest in well being analysis as anybody he knew. His final checkup, in 2025, was inexperienced throughout the board. “It was the most effective I’d had in years,” he says.

Then, after a exercise, his arm swelled.

He didn’t suppose a lot of it at first. Every week handed earlier than he noticed a physician, who discovered two blood clots in his veins and scheduled surgical procedure. However the pre-op exams modified all the pieces. A health care provider walked again into the room and instructed him the process wasn’t taking place.

“We see an 11-by-11-by-8 centimeter mass behind your sternum,” the physician mentioned.

A biopsy confirmed what Christou had by no means earlier than even contemplated. He had an aggressive, fast-growing type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a uncommon prognosis affecting roughly one in 420,000 individuals, brought on by a random genetic mutation with no connection to way of life, food regimen, or stress.

The tumor had solely existed for about three months. In three extra weeks, it will have reached stage 4.

“Fortunate in my unluckiness,” Christou instructed this editor this week from his dwelling in Athens, the place he lives half time. “It was solely discovered as a result of I went in for one thing else totally.”

What adopted was an training within the limits of the medical system, and in what a decided affected person can do about that with instruments now out there.

His first oncologist, a famend specialist, beneficial the lighter of two out there chemotherapy regimens. Christou booked his first infusion three days out. Then, the night time earlier than, he sought a second opinion.

That second physician didn’t hesitate. He beneficial the tougher routine — steady in-hospital infusion, biking each three weeks throughout six months — citing Christou’s particular pathology. The lighter remedy carried roughly a 60% success charge for his presentation. The aggressive one introduced that quantity to round 85%. Two world-class docs. Diametrically reverse suggestions.

“As founders, we maintain the wheel,” Christou says of the propensity of many individuals to just accept what they’re instructed — and why extra shouldn’t. “You hear many issues. You don’t should observe the primary recommendation.”

He didn’t decide to simply observe the recommendation of the second doctor, both. Over the following two days, he gathered 12 opinions in complete — drawing on his skilled community, reaching out to hematologists and oncologists within the US and overseas, calling in each favor he may. Eleven to at least one voted in favor of the tougher path. He took it. The choice, he says, didn’t really feel courageous a lot as logical. He was already a data-driven individual, and now the stakes felt existential to him.

Over six months of remedy, Christou approached chemotherapy the way in which he approached constructing an organization, as a marathon of sprints — every of them with a finite cycle and every week full of information factors. He had executed a compulsory 25-month army service in Cyprus at age 18 and he borrowed from that have, too. He was going to be soldier, he instructed himself. Belief the method. Six cycles. Get by means of it.

He wore his Whoop all through, and located it remarkably correct at predicting the times his immune system would backside out, typically flagging them earlier than signs arrived. He saved a symptom journal utilizing voice transcription, logging each shift, each facet impact, each treatment and counter-medication. He narrowed his focus to 3 variables: sleep, vitamin, and, firstly, psychology. (“It strikes the needle greater than something,” mentioned Christou. “I by no means requested ‘why me’ — not as soon as. That query has no helpful reply.”)

He fed all of it — blood outcomes, scan information, wearable output, journal entries — into Claude. He’s removed from alone in turning to chatbots for medical steering. A public opinion ballot launched in March discovered {that a} third of American adults now use them for well being data and recommendation. The tales accumulating on-line recommend that for some sufferers, AI is delivering what the system couldn’t.

Specialists urge warning; Danielle Bitterman, scientific lead for information science and AI at Mass Normal Brigham, has instructed the New York Instances in latest months that general-purpose chatbots are steadily flawed and “haven’t been completely evaluated” for personalised diagnoses.

Christou doesn’t disagree. “It didn’t exchange the docs,” he says, but it surely “helped me ask the proper questions.”

For a situation as uncommon as his — one an oncologist would possibly see every year — entry to a mannequin that had absorbed the complete physique of medical literature was, he says, merely not the identical as a Google search.

The mannequin proved essential on the finish of remedy. His remaining PET scan — the imaging used to detect lively illness — got here again ambiguous. His oncologist started discussing a second line of remedy, doubtlessly radiotherapy, close to his coronary heart and lungs. It was an alarming improvement.

Christou once more did his homework. He learn that for this particular lymphoma, the false-positive charge on end-of-treatment PET scans is round 60% — a statistic that also astonishes him. “It’s 2026,” he says. “Sixty %.”

He fed all three of his PET scans and his MRI into Claude, which flagged a identified however simply missed phenomenon: in sufferers underneath 40 recovering from such a lymphoma, the thymus gland can reactivate after chemotherapy, displaying up on imaging as what seems to be lively illness. Given his age, his particular scan traits, the mannequin put the chance of that rationalization at roughly 90%.

He sought three extra opinions. The fourth physician confirmed it: thymus rebound. There was no lively illness. No radiotherapy was wanted. He was clear.

Christou remains to be unfolding what the final 12 months has meant, for his well being, how he works, and the way he thinks about time. He constructed Keragon, his present firm, earlier than any of this occurred; it’s an AI-powered platform that helps medical practices automate their administrative operations.

However going by means of the system as a affected person has given him new perspective. He watched nurses and docs buried underneath duties that had nothing to do with care. He obtained the identical chemotherapy protocol as an 80-year-old lady, the uncomfortable side effects managed by means of a cascading chain of further medication, every inflicting issues of their very own. He says he’s sure that we’ll look again at this period of remedy and cringe.

He takes Sundays off now, principally. He tries to be current — at lunch with associates, at dwelling together with his canine, in conversations that may as soon as have felt like a distraction from work. A VC buddy instructed him one thing years in the past that he mentioned he saved replaying throughout remedy: Be pleased now. He says it’s among the many hardest issues to do and but he lastly appreciates its significance.

He says he’d be pleased to speak to anybody going by means of one thing much like share notes, examine experiences. He appears to means it.

“It’s not taking place in 10 years,” he says of what AI can already do for sufferers keen to make use of it. “It’s taking place as we speak.”