Brussels: A 13-year-old Belgian boy has become the world’s first patient to be cured of a deadly brain cancer.
Locus Jemeljanova was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) at the age of six. It is an extremely rare and fast-growing brain tumor that kills 98 percent of people within five years.
Locus was routinely given everolimus (a type of chemotherapy drug) in a clinical trial. This drug is used as a cancer treatment for kidney, pancreas, breast and brain, but it has not yet been used successfully in DIPG.
The improved effect of the treatment on the locus was large and the tumor gradually disappeared. Seven years later, Locus has no residual cancer and is now on a five-year remission period. The remission period is the period during which the disease is of mild severity or of such a nature that the patient is not affected.
Luke’s doctor, Jack Grill, said that Luke had beaten all odds and that the case offered a glimmer of hope.
Everolimus works by blocking a protein called M-Tor. Mtor protein helps cancer cells to multiply by dividing.
This drug stops or slows the growth of cancer by stopping the growth of cancer cells and reducing the blood supply to tumor cells.
This drug is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of various types of cancer.
(function(d, s, id){
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3&appId=770767426360150”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.7”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));