As of: March 18, 2024, 5:57 a.m
By: Robin Dittrich, Romina Kunze
Comments
Press
Split
A 13-year-old from Belgium has survived the world's deadliest cancer.
His case could revolutionize medicine and gives hope for new treatment approaches.
Munich – When Lucas from Belgium felt a little unwell during a family vacation, no one could have imagined what was to follow.
First the shock diagnosis, then the sensation: the then six-year-old was diagnosed with pontine gliomas, a particularly deadly type of tumor.
Now, seven years later, he is considered cured - the first person ever to have this disease.
Medicine draws new hope from his case.
Therapy works surprisingly well: Boy defeats what is actually an incurable form of cancer
Diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPG) mainly occur in children.
This special and highly aggressive form of brain tumor is one of the deadliest types of cancer in the world.
Usually there is no cure.
According to the Institute for Experimental Molecular Imaging, hundreds of children in Europe suffer from it every year.
The average life expectancy after diagnosis is between nine and 15 months.
Only around two percent of patients survive longer than five years, and no cure has been known - until now.
13-year-old Lucas is considered the only person in the world to have defeated a particularly aggressive brain tumor.
© Screenshot/Facebook
Lucas, now 13 years old, is the first known case to end in a cure.
At the age of six, doctors predicted he had little chance of survival, as reported by
mirror.co.uk
, among others .
Then his treatment began with the drug everolimus.
This therapy has so far only had a limited effect on DIPG.
However, the tumor in Lucas' head began to shrink.
Seven years later he has completely disappeared.
Rare but deadly brain tumor: Neither chemo nor surgery helps with diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas
According to a new WHO study, one in five people will develop cancer in their lifetime.
However, illness with DIPG is relatively rare.
The proportion of all pediatric brain tumors is only around 10 to 15 percent, as the
German Medical Journal
reports.
In North America and Europe together, around 300 children become ill every year.
But the tricky thing about this deadly form of cancer: even if it is discovered early, there are hardly any options to treat it.
Due to its location in the brain stem, where important control centers for breathing, for example, are located, it is too risky to remove the tumor surgically.
It also shows “diffuse” infiltrative growth.
According to Ärzteblatt,
all chemotherapy treatments have
so far proven to be ineffective.
DIPG occurs rarely in adulthood.
According to the German Brain Tumor Aid, the following symptoms can indicate this:
My news
Tourists misbehave – city is now blocking vacationers from reading
Swarm earthquake directly under residential area: Fear of supervolcano eruption in Italy grows
Porsche stops public bus on ghost ride in Zillertal ski area – owner talks about “bad feeling” read
Italian mafia conquers Lake Garda – tourist places infiltrated by clans
Massive rock fall on Lake Garda: Huge rock thunders onto cars - shore road closed until further notice
Italy's supervolcano causes shipwrecks
Headache
nausea
Vomit
Balance disorders
Half-sided paralysis (hemiparesis)
“I don’t know of any other case in the world” – tumor healing fascinates medicine
It quickly became clear how serious Lucas was.
His slight discomfort on vacation was followed by loss of consciousness.
The doctors then diagnosed the dangerous type of cancer.
Jacques Grill, the attending physician at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Center in Paris, had to tell Lucas' parents that their son was dying of cancer.
The drug everolimus used during treatment was intended to block mTOR, a protein involved in cell division and growth of cancer cells.
Lucas won his fight against cancer, and his doctor was enthusiastic about the positive development during the therapy: “Through a series of MRI scans, I was able to observe how the tumor completely disappeared,” he told the AFP news agency.
He added: “I don’t know of any other case like this in the world.”
Now we want to investigate how Lucas was able to defeat the deadly tumor.
Other children have also responded to the therapy so far, but only in Lucas did DIPG disappear completely.
Based on his healing, scientists are trying to evaluate all the data for future successful therapy.
A new vaccine, which could possibly be introduced in 2028, also gives hope for effective cancer treatment.
The editorial team wrote this article and then used an AI language model for optimization at its own discretion. All information has been carefully checked.
Find out more about our AI principles here.