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At six years old, Lucas faced a grim diagnosis of a rare brain tumor, which left him little hope. Yet seven years later, he remains a beacon of triumph with no trace of the once-debilitating illness.
Lucas, a Belgian teenager, emerges as the first known case in the world of a child who defeated brain stem glioma, known as an aggressive cancer, as proclaimed by researchers at the Gustave Roussy cancer research center in Paris, France.
Dr. Jacques Grill, a research doctor responsible since 2011 for the Brain Tumor Program at the Gustave Rouss Department of Child and Adolescent Oncology, remembers having to tell Lucas’ parents the difficult news that their son was going to die.
Yet seven years later, it remains a beacon of triumph with no trace of the once-debilitating illness.
“Lucas beat all the odds” to survive, Dr. Grill told the French news agency AFP.
Lucas’s story is a testament to resilience, defying terrible odds that overshadowed other children affected by diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).
miraculous recovery
While most face a grim prognosis, Lucas’s miraculous recovery is unparalleled.
His journey began with experimental treatment under the BIOMEDE trial, which showed a promising response to the drug everolimus.
With each MRI, the complete disappearance of the tumor amazed medical experts.
“During a series of MRIs, I watched the tumor completely disappear,” Dr Grill told AFP.
However, he refrained from stopping treatment until a year and a half ago, when Lucas revealed that he had stopped taking the medication.
“I don’t know of any other case like it in the world,” said Dr. Grill, one of the scientists working on a treatment for DIPG.
In November 2019, Dr. Grill presented initial results from a randomized trial in the first 230 patients in Europe and Australia as part of the BIOMEDE 1 study at the Society of Neuro-Oncology conference in Phoenix, USA.
The society is a group of healthcare professionals dedicated to promoting advances in neuro-oncology through research and education.
Possible implications
The reasons behind Lucas’ remarkable recovery and its possible implications for similar cases await further investigation.
While seven other children in the trial survived, Lucas is the only one who achieved complete disappearance of the tumor, according to the AFP report.
While Lucas’ remarkable recovery inspires hope, the mechanism of action surrounding his recovery requires further medical exploration.
Researchers delve into the genetic complexities of their tumor and cultivate optimism about possible advances in the fight against similar cases.
Although the road to widespread treatment remains long, advances in research and trials offer renewed optimism for conquering this formidable enemy.
The medical community has highlighted advances that mean 85 per cent of children now survive more than five years after being diagnosed with cancer.
Cases
Each year, about 300 children in the United States and up to 100 in France are diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a fatal brain tumor.
While researchers express enthusiasm for this promising discovery, they caution that any potential treatment remains distant. “On average, it takes 10 to 15 years from the first lead to a drug; it’s a long, drawn-out process,” Dr. Grill explained.
Dr. David Ziegler, a pediatric oncologist at Sydney Children’s Hospital in Australia, has noted significant transformations in the DIPG landscape over the past decade. Advances in research laboratories, increased funding and trials like BIOMEDE “convince me that we will soon discover that we can cure some patients,” Dr. Ziegler told AFP.
About the BIOMEDE trial
The BIOMEDE trial (which stands for Biological Medicine for Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma Eradication) is looking at targeted cancer therapies to treat a type of brain tumor called DIPG. The trial, supported by several institutions, including research centers in Australia, Europe and the United Kingdom, is aimed at children and young people up to 25 years of age.
The standard treatment element for DIPG is radiation therapy. Unfortunately, for many people, radiation therapy is not a cure and the tumor is likely to return within a year.
The trial team believes it may be better to give a targeted cancer drug (a biological therapy) along with standard radiation therapy. But they are not sure.
Some targeted cancer drugs work by blocking pathways in cancer cells that tell them to grow and divide. These are called cancer growth blockers. Certain substances (biomarkers) in the tumor tissue show that these pathways are active.
As part of the BIOMEDE trial, researchers take a small sample of tumor tissue (biopsy) to look for these biomarkers. Depending on the biomarkers present, patients receive one of the following in addition to radiation therapy:
- erlotinib
- everolimus
- dasatinib
The aim of the trial is to investigate how well erlotinib, everolimus and dasatinib work with radiotherapy in children and young people with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, according to Cancer Research UK.
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