A Cure?

 I have some wonderful news from France that my mom shared with me on Valentine's Day. A child, a 13 year old, from Belgium has been cured of DIPG with an experimental drug (x). It seemed to good to be true, honestly. How often do you hear that a tumor with a 0% survival rate just... disappeared? And other children in the cohort surviving beyond the normal survival time?

I went a little deeper. The medication, everolimus, has been studied a few times for DIPG. It's a repurposed drug, currently used for a variety of types of tumors and more. According to this research on genetically targeted treatments for DIPG, the average survival time increased from 14 months without the adjuvent to 20 months with the additional treatment. However, this is ultimately a very early study on the drug, not a study that will truly create a treatment plan to help these kids survive.

In another phase I study, you can see results with two biologic treatments, the same drug above combined with another. Since it's phase one, it's basically just demonstrating that it's safe to study. I sincerely hope that this inspires another wave of research on DIPG for the hundreds of children worldwide diagnosed every year.

So, what is the moral here? This is extremely exciting news! A potential cure! And we can't lose hope that this is indeed the case. Someday we will have a cure. One child at a time, we can cure cancer.

Donate to my St Baldricks fundraiser here.