Julie cannot be certain exactly what made the difference in her outcomes. After the first of two recurrences from a rare sarcoma, she cast a wide net, believing she needed more than the standard of care of surgery and chemo. As a mother of four, she was determined to leave no stone unturned. Her approach included high-dose infusions, biological dentistry, immune stimulation, mistletoe fever therapy, personalized vaccines, nutrient analysis, and an extraordinary commitment to reading, learning, sharing, and advocating.

“I wasn’t willing to just be average and follow the guidelines with their average outcomes,” says Julie.

Now, she hopes to better understand which of these interventions may have played a role in her progress—and how her experience might help others. “I love the idea of someone analyzing my data and finding the nuggets of what I did and why it works,” she adds.

To support this effort, Julie created an account with the Morningside Registry, consenting to share information and uploading her medical records, full treatment history, and genomic testing results.

Many patients like Julie have asked their oncologists, “Would you like to know what I did?” Too often the answer is silence. It’s time to start telling our stories—because the more voices we gather, the stronger the signal becomes. Let machine learning help us find the patterns, the outliers, the quiet innovations—and begin to shape a smarter, more responsive future in cancer care, one insight at a time.

Stories like Julie’s raise an important question: if patients are already conducting real world experiments with their health, why isn’t the medical community studying what works? The answer lies in how we've traditionally approached cancer research.

In today’s complex medical landscape, patients are doing more than just following orders—they’re reading, experimenting, and building personalized plans that reflect their values, bodies, and lives. But despite how common this self-advocacy has become, traditional research and clinical trials rarely capture these full, nuanced stories. The result? A vast amount of potentially life-changing data remains invisible.

That’s why a one-of-a-kind initiative is stepping in to change the conversation.

The Morningside Center at Emory, a nonprofit focused on affordable and overlooked cancer treatments, has partnered with xCures, a technology company specializing in patient-driven cancer platforms, to launch a much-needed project: a national patient-powered registry that collects real-world data from individuals managing cancer through a mix of standard and integrative treatments. Many of these approaches are low-cost, accessible, and deeply personal—yet they often go unstudied in conventional trials.

For example, Morningside is working to highlight how something as simple as the timing of treatment can dramatically influence outcomes. A recent randomized phase III trial in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer found that administering immunochemotherapy before 3:00 p.m. nearly doubled progression-free survival compared to treatment given later in the day. This low-cost adjustment—just shifting appointment times—could profoundly enhance patient outcomes by aligning treatment with circadian rhythms.

Another area of focus is magnesium—a common, inexpensive mineral often overlooked in standard care. Across multiple cancer types, researchers found that patients with optimal magnesium levels (≥0.79 mmol/L) responded better to immunotherapy and had significantly longer progression-free and overall survival. In lung, esophageal, and Hodgkin lymphoma cases, higher magnesium levels consistently predicted improved treatment responses, making routine monitoring and correction a simple but potentially life-saving intervention.

The Morningside-xCures registry aims to change that by enrolling 1,000+ people who are using integrative, non-standard, or complementary methods to manage their cancer. The collected data—ranging from lab results and medication lists to personal narratives—will be analyzed to identify patterns: what seems to help, what doesn't, and what’s worth investigating further.

This registry is not just another study. It’s a radical rethinking of who drives medical discovery. It asks a simple yet powerful question: What if patients were not only subjects of research, but its authors?

Crucially, this initiative isn’t driven by profit. It’s not about selling products or promoting any specific therapy. It’s about learning from each other in a rigorous, secure, and compassionate way.

What makes this initiative fresh and new is not just the technology or the collaboration—it’s the mindset. It recognizes that people living with cancer are already conducting their own experiments every day. They are weighing risks, adjusting regimens, managing side effects, and finding ways to hold on to both dignity and hope.

By collecting and studying these real-world decisions, the Morningside Center and xCures hope to empower patients—not just with treatment, but with knowledge.