An 11-year-old Indian origin boy has become the first patient to receive a new cancer therapy and is recovering in a children’s hospital in London funded by United Kingdom’s National Health Service.
Yuvan Thakkar suffers from relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and has received the pioneering treatment known as Kymriah – a type of immunotherapy called CAR-T therapy, which modifies a patient’s immune system cells, known as T cells, to attack the cancer cells.
The young boy is recovering at Great Ormond Street Hospital this week, with some time to go before the results are amply known.
“I really hope I get better soon so I can visit Lego House in Denmark. I love Lego and am building a big model Bugatti while I’m in the hospital,” said Yuvan in a statement released by the hospital.
The treatment has been tested in clinical trials in the United States where it has been shown that about 50-62 percent of patients get through without leukemia for 12 months or further.
Yuvan was diagnosed with leukemia in 2014 and relapsed after standard treatments and gone through a bone marrow transplant last year. But in October 2018, he got ill over again.
“When Yuvan was diagnosed it was the most heart-breaking news we had ever received. We tried to stay hopeful as they say leukemia in children has a 90 percent cure rate, but sadly, his illness relapsed,” said his parents Sapna and Vinay Thakkar.
“This new therapy is our last hope. It means a rebirth to us if this treatment works and we hope it really does. We are so glad that we at least have this new option now,” they said.
The hospital said that research has shown the treatments are effective for patients with particularly aggressive cancers after standard treatments have failed.
“We are so pleased to be able to offer patients like Yuvan another chance to be cured. While it will be a while before the outcome of this powerful new therapy is known, the treatment has shown very promising results in clinical trials and we are hopeful that it will help,” said Sara Ghorashian, Consultant in Paediatric Haematology at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) – one of the US’ leading children’s hospitals.
“GOSH is proud to be one of the first UK sites that will offer CAR-T treatment on the NHS, which recognizes the hospital’s world-leading expertise in delivering these innovative therapies to patients as part of clinical trials,” said Matthew Shaw, Chief Executive of GOSH.
In November earlier this year, it was announced that GOSH, along with two other UK hospitals would be the first to offer this treatment to the NHS patients.
Back in November when Yuvan’s treatment began, doctors at GOSH collected T-cells, a type of immune cell from his blood.
After undergoing a complex laboratory procedure that enabled the T-cells to recognize and kill cancer cells, the T-cells were returned to Yuvan earlier this week.
Researchers at GOSH are currently exploring the use of “next generation” CAR-T cells to further reduce the chance of relapse.
-Sowmya Sangam
