I can only imagine what the parents of this 5-year-old British boy named Oscar Saxelby-Lee must be going through.
Their son has been stricken by cancer at such a tender age.
But no, it’s not just any cancer. It’s a rare and aggressive form of cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukaemia which has rejected all forms of treatment thus far.
It is so rare that only one other child in the world has had it.
And so, the ordeal began in 2019 wherein the little boy spent 10 months in total in isolation wards as medical experts battled to give him another chance at life.
According to Channel News Asia, he has gone through four regimes of chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant and treatment that required healthy cells to be injected into him, but to no avail.
After the fourth and strongest dose of chemotherapy, they quickly realised that the ‘usual treatment’ for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia was nowhere near enough.
Cancer cells could still be found in Oscar’s blood.
None of the treatments had worked.
But they refused to give up hope.
Experimental Treatment In Singapore
A latest experimental treatment that has been developed in Singapore might just do the trick.
To put it simply, immune cells from a patient’s blood is drawn and equipped with a Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR-T).
This receptor will bind itself to a specific protein on the cancer cell and activates the CAR-T cells to kill the cancer cells.
According to Associate Professor Allen Yeoh, head of paediatric oncology at the National University Hospital (NUH), this form of CAR-T treatment is more difficult to perform because the leukaemia cells resemble Oscar’s immunity system.
They weren’t kidding when they said it was experimental. Oscar will be the second person in the world to undergo this treatment.
The first child received the treatment just months ago in NUH.
It is classified under ‘compassionate treatment’, which means that the treatment is not in the medical trial stage yet.
That said, Oscar’s parents and doctors have faith that this treatment might save his life.
His 24-year-old mother said, “The hope is he is in remission for the rest of his life – that he’s cured. But I would love to see him without any suffering any more.
“It has been a year of trauma. If I can ask for one thing, it’s for him to be happy and well and himself, content with his life.”
Let’s all wish Oscar a speedy recovery, and may the treatment prove successful for this courageous little boy.
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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