When Lucas was diagnosed with a rare type of brain tumor at the age of six, there was no doubt about his prognosis.
French doctor Jacques Grill becomes emotional as he recalls having to tell Lucas’ parents that their son was dying.
But seven years later, Lucas is now 13 years old and has no trace of the tumor left.
Belgian boy becomes world’s first child cured of disease brainstem gliomaResearchers who treated him say this is a particularly brutal form of cancer.
“Lucas overcame all odds” to survive, said Grill, director of the brain tumor program at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Center in Paris.
This tumor, officially called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), is diagnosed in approximately 300 children each year in the United States and up to 100 children in France.
in front of international childhood cancer day On Thursday, the medical community praised progress that means 85% of children survive five years or more after being diagnosed with cancer.
However, the outlook for children with DIPG tumors remains bleak, with most children not surviving more than a year after diagnosis. A recent study found that only 10 percent are alive after two years.
Radiation therapy may be able to slow the rapid progression of aggressive tumors, but no drugs have been shown to be effective against radiation therapy.
There is no other case like his.
Lucas and his family traveled from Belgium to France to be among the first patients to take part in the BIOMEDE trial, which is testing a potential new drug for DIPG.
Lucas reacted strongly to chemotherapy from the beginning. everolimushe was randomly assigned.
“Through a series of MRI scans, we saw the tumor completely disappear,” Grill told AFP.
But doctors didn’t bother stopping the treatment plan until at least a year and a half ago, when it became clear Lucas was no longer taking the medication.
“I don’t know of any other case like his in the world,” Grill said.
It is still unknown why exactly Lucas made such a full recovery and how his case can help children like him in the future.
Seven other children in the trial survived for years after diagnosis, but only Lucas’ tumor completely disappeared.
The reason these children responded to the drug and others did not was likely due to the “biological specificity” of their individual tumors, Grill said.
“Lucas’ tumor had a very rare mutation that appears to have made the cells much more sensitive to the drug,” he added.
reenactment of lucas
In addition to studying genetic abnormalities in patients’ tumors, researchers are also creating tumor “organoids,” which are clumps of cells made in the lab.
“Lucas’ case offers real hope,” said researcher Mary-Anne DeBilly, who oversees the lab’s research.
“We will try to reproduce the differences we saw in his cells in vitro,” she told AFP.
The research team hopes to recreate his genetic differences in organoids to see if they can kill tumors as effectively as Lucas did.
If that works, “the next step will be to find drugs that have the same effect on tumor cells as these changes in cells,” DeBilly said.
While researchers are excited about this new lead, they caution that possible treatments are still a long way off.
“On average, it takes 10 to 15 years to go from first clue to drug. It’s a long, drawn-out process,” Grill said.
David Ziegler, a pediatric oncologist at Australia’s Sydney Children’s Hospital, said the landscape surrounding DIPG had changed dramatically over the past decade.
With breakthroughs in the lab, increased funding and trials such as BIOMEDE, “we are confident that we will soon see that we can treat some patients,” Ziegler told AFP.
© Agence France-Presse
