Photo: Childhood Cancer International
Seven years after Lucas was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor at age six, the Belgian boy is the first child in the world to have been cured of brainstem glioma, says Jacques Grill, head of the brain tumor program at the Gustave Roussy cancer center in Paris. The tumor is diagnosed every year in around 300 children in the US and up to 100 in France, and the outlook remains grim. Lucas became one of the first patients to join the BIOMEDE trial which tests potential new drugs for DIPG. From the start, he responded strongly to the cancer drug everolimus, which he was randomly assigned. Why Lucas fully recovered, and how his case could help other children in the future, remains to be seen. Seven other children survived years after being diagnosed, but only Lucas's tumor vanished.
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