At the age of 6, Mr Lucasa boy from Belgium, was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive brain tumor specifically with intrinsic glioma brain pons (DIPG), a rare and aggressive type of brain tumor in children, affecting part of the brain stem.

It is about one deadly cancer of brain, which often kills within a year of diagnosis.

Surgery is almost impossible due to the location of the tumors. Radiation therapy can sometimes slow the aggressive tumor’s rapid progress, but no drug has been shown to be effective against it.

However, seven years later, Lucas is healthy and his tumor is gone.

“Lucas beat all the odds and survived,” said his doctor, Jacques Grill, who heads the brain tumor program at the Gustave Roussy cancer center in Paris.

A unique case that gives hope

Lucas traveled to France with his family to join BIOMEDE, a clinical trial for potential new drugs for DIPG. The researchers found that Lucas’s body responded immediately to the cancer drug everolimus.

“During a series of MRIs, I saw the tumor disappear completely,” Grill told AFP.

“I don’t know of any other case like this in the world,” Grill said.

Seven other children in the trial survived years after diagnosis, but only just the volume of Lucas disappeared completely.

The reason why these children responded to the drugs while others did not is likely due to the “biological peculiarities” of their tumors, the researcher explained.

“Lucas’ tumor brought an extremely rare mutation which we believe made his cells much more sensitive to the drug,” he added.

Researchers study the genetic abnormalities of patients’ tumors as well as the creation of “organoids” – masses of cells grown in the laboratory.

“The case of Lucas offers a real hopesaid Marie-Anne Debilly, a researcher overseeing the lab work.

“We will try to reproduce in vitro the differences we identified in his cells,” the researcher told AFP.

Restrained optimism among researchers

The team wants to reproduce his genetic differences in organoids to see if the tumor can then be killed as effectively as in Lucas. If this is successful, “the next step will be to find a drug that will have the same effect on cancer cells as these cellular changes,” explained Debilly.

While researchers are excited about this news, they cautioned that any potential cure is still a long way off.

“On average, it takes 10-15 years to develop a drug – a long and time-consuming process,” Grill said.

David Ziegler, a pediatric oncologist at Sydney Children’s Hospital in Australia, says the facts about DIPG have changed dramatically over the past decade.

“Discoveries in the lab, increased funding and clinical trials like BIOMEDE make me believe that we will soon be able to treat some patients,” he told AFP.