The idea of never having to worry that my cancer might come back or spread is mind-boggling.

Once you’ve had cancer, even years after all the surgeries and chemotherapy, you always have that niggling question – will it come back or metastasize?

It’s the question that never really goes out of the back of your head if you’ve gone through cancer treatment. I’m one of the lucky ones – I had breast cancer, it was found early and I had multiple surgeries and chemotherapy (all chronicled here when I was working as a Reuters correspondent). I’m still on drugs to hopefully stop it from coming back. But I know lots of other women and men who aren’t so lucky; they have metastatic disease and are constantly going through toxic treatments to limit the cancer’s spread and prolong their lives.

But wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to worry about metastasis?

That’s why Remedy Plan’s efforts to find a way to stop cancer from spreading are so exciting. What it could mean is a cancer patient could take a drug – and probably keep taking it for the rest of their lives – and keep the cancer cells from spreading and forming more tumors.

So essentially what could happen for a patient who gets diagnosed with cancer is, instead of going through multiple rounds of chemo or radiation, they would take a non-toxic drug that would prevent metastatic spread. They could have the tumor surgically removed (if possible). But cancer containment therapy would make sure it doesn’t come back. So no nausea, vomiting or painful mouth sores that make it hard to eat. You wouldn’t have to worry about losing your hair or getting burned skin from radiation.

What would it be like to turn cancer into a chronic but controllable disease? I hope we can find out. And end that niggling feeling too.