Gavin Nielsen was 2 years old when he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive brain cancer.
The smiley toddler had diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG, a cancer that occurs in the part of the brain stem that controls vital functions including breathing, blood pressure and heart rate. Very few treatment options exist, and the prognosis for children diagnosed with the disease is, on average, less than one year.
“When we have a child newly diagnosed with this disease, we walk into the room and tell the child’s parents their child has a terminal disease and the only option is palliative radiation,” said Dr. Robbie Majzner, director of the pediatric and young adult cancer cell therapy program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital. 0 seconds of 3 minutes, 21 secondsVolume 90% Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
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Decrease Volume↓Seek Forward→Seek Backward←Captions On/OffcFullscreen/Exit FullscreenfMute/UnmutemDecrease Caption Size-Increase Caption Size+ or =Seek %0-9 00:0003:2103:21 Experimental brain tumor treatment shows promise for pediatric brain cancer 03:22Gavin’s parents started him on radiation. For 30 days, he had to be sedated daily for the treatment. But they also started looking for clinical trials to enroll Gavin in.At the time, many of the trials for DIPG had a minimum age requirement of 3 years old, his parents, Nate and Ashlee, said.But Gavin did qualify for one trial, led by Dr. Nicholas Vitanza, a pediatric neuro-oncologist at the Seattle Children’s Hospital Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.Vitanza is part of a […]
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