2023-09-29 16:37:31
A 12-year-old Belgian treated in Val-de-Marne appears to have almost cured of brain cancer deemed incurable. A miracle that doctors seek to understand.
This is what, in the absence of rational explanations, we call a miracle. Lucas, a 12-year-old Belgian boy, no longer has any trace of an extremely aggressive tumor deemed incurable.
Six years ago, he was diagnosed with “infiltrating brainstem glioma”, a brain cancer that affects dozens of children each year. Today, “he has nothing left”, assure his parents to the Parisian, without however saying the word “healing”, as a precaution.
Lucas’ family has come a long way. “The doctors were clear. They gave us the statistics, which were not good, not good at all…” remembers the father, Cédric. But Lucas defied the odds.
A cure without treatment
Treated at the Gustave-Roussy cancer center in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne), the pre-teen gradually eliminated the disease. The heavy treatment that he ingested daily had nothing to do with it, as no medication to date has cured this cancer.
A year ago, when all the signals were green for Lucas, his doctor chose to stop the treatment. A heavy decision which had no negative effect on the boy. On the contrary, it only confirmed his remission.
Doctors are now trying to understand what happened to the boy so that his experience can be useful to other children. “We think that Lucas had a particular form of the disease. We need to understand what and why to succeed in medically reproducing in other patients what happened naturally with him. That would be great,” says the doctor. Jacques Grill of the Gustave-Roussy hospital.
According to The Parisianeight other young patients followed as part of the Biomede clinical trial carried out by the Gustave-Roussy hospital are today considered “long responders”, without relapse three years following their diagnosis.
Lucas’ family has only one wish: “that Lucas is not the exception.”
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