the hope is, this pill is stopping Lily-Mae’s cancer from coming back

On Tuesday we watched a scientist tear up at a dinner party.

Around twenty years ago, Dr Andre Bachmann started working with a drug called DFMO in Hawaii. In the early 2000s, he recognized the fact DFMO inhibited something called ODC could make it a good drug to treat neuroblastoma, and started working on that, in a lab.

In 2008, at a conference in San Diego, the father of a boy with neuroblastoma introduced Dr Bachmann to Dr Giselle Sholler of the NMTRC, who was doing some promising work in clinical neuroblastoma research. Less than two years later, in 2010, the first clinical trial of DFMO opened. In 2012 a Phase II opened.

Because of Ezra is helping to fund this trial, and although results cannot be shared of ongoing clinical trials, they are encouraging. Neuroblastoma has such a high rate of relapse, remission is termed “no evidence of disease” because its thought we just can’t detect residual disease. These DFMO trials are hoping to stop relapse.

For Lily-Mae (in the picture with her mom Jude), who is 15 months cancer free now, there is incredible hope. At dinner in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Tuesday, for the first time, Dr Bachmann watched a patient (Lily-Mae) take a DFMO pill, with a sip of water. That simple sip, 20 years in the making, may be helping children to beat neuroblastoma cancer. The hope is, this pill is stopping Lily-Mae’s cancer from coming back.

This is what we’re doing. #thismatters

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