13 year old child gets cured of rare brain cancer; Read on to know all about this world’s first case – Healthcare News

A 13-year-old has beaten all odds and became the world’s first child to be cured of brainstem glioma, a particularly brutal cancer. Lucas was six when he was diagnosed with this rare brain cancer.
According to the doctors, the tumor, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), is diagnosed every year in around 300 children in the United States, and up to 100 in France. It is noteworthy that most children with the DIPG tumor do not live a year beyond diagnosis. A recent study found that only 10 percent were alive two years on.
The team of doctors highlighted that although radiotherapy can sometimes slow the progression of tumor, no drug is effective against it.
Lucas traveled from Belgium to France and became one of the first patients to join the BIOMEDE trial which tests potential new drugs for DIPG. French doctor Jacques Grill, head of the brain tumor programme at the Gustave Roussy cancer center in Paris, said, as quoted by news agency AFP, Lucas was reponding strongly to the cancer drug Everolimus since the beginning which he was randomly assigned.
“Over a series of MRI scans, I watched as the tumor completely disappeared,” Grill told AFP. The doctors continued to give Lucas the treatment regimen at least until a year and a half ago.
The team of doctors will not analyse why Lucas so fully recovered, and how his case could help other children like him in the future. It is noteworthy that seven other children in the trial survived years after being diagnosed, however only Lucas’s tumor completely vanished.
“Lucas’s tumor had an extremely rare mutation which we believe made its cells far more sensitive to the drug,” Grill said.
Reportedly, the researchers are studying the genetic abnormalities of patients’ tumors as well as creating tumor ” organoids.”
“Lucas’s case offers real hope. We will try to reproduce in vitro the differences that we have identified in his cells,” said Marie-Anne Debily, a researcher supervising the lab work.
Although the researchers are happy with the developments of Lucas’ case, they maintain that there is still a long way to go to find the right treatment.
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