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chemotherapy

Lucas Jemeljanova, then aged 5, with his parents and sister a year before he was diagnosed with DIPG. (via Facebook)
Lucas Jemeljanova poses with his family a year before being diagnosed with cancer (Facebook)

It's a parent's worst nightmare: Taking your child to the doctor and receiving a life-changing diagnosis. It only adds to the heartbreak when they find out there may be no effective treatment at all, and that all they can do is hope for the best.

Few diagnoses strike fear in the heart of parents and doctors more than a cancer called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG. Primarily found in children, DIPG is a highly aggressive brain tumor that is uniformly fatal, with less than 10 percent of children surviving longer than two years after diagnosis. The tumors grow fast and on extremely vital areas like the spine and brain stem, making them exceptionally hard to remove. Though young patients have been treated with radiation, chemotherapy, and surgeries, no one had ever been cured of the fatal cancer.

But for the first time ever, a 13-year-old boy from Belgium named Lucas Jemeljanova has beaten the odds.


cancer, childhood cancer, pediatric cancer, kids, medicine, healthcare, research, innovation, clinical trials, DIPG Various brain scans. Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Diagnosed with DIPG at age six, Lucas’ doctor Jacques Grill told Lucas’ parents, Cedric and Olesja, that he was unlikely to live very long. Instead of giving up hope, Cedric and Olesja flew Lucas to France to participate in a clinical trial called BIOMEDE, which tested new potential drugs against DIPG.

Lucas was randomly assigned a medication called everolimus in the clinical trial, a chemotherapy drug that works by blocking a protein called mTOR. mTOR helps cancer cells divide and grow new blood vessels, while everolimus decreases blood supply to the tumor cells and stops cancer cells from reproducing. Everolimus, a tablet that’s taken once per day, has been approved in the UK and the US to treat cancers in the breast, kidneys, stomach, pancreas, and others—but until the BIOMEDE clinical trial, it had never before been used to treat DIPG.

cancer, childhood cancer, pediatric cancer, kids, medicine, healthcare, research, innovation, clinical trials, DIPG Lucas Jemeljanova poses with his mother (lesja Jemeljanova / Facebook)

Though doctors weren’t sure how Lucas would react to the medication, it quickly became clear that the results were good.

“Over a series of MRI scans, I watched as the tumor completely disappeared,” Grill said in an interview. Even more remarkably, the tumor has not returned since. Lucas, who is now thirteen, is considered officially cured of DIPG.

Even after the tumor was gone, Grill, who is the head of the Brain Tumor Program in the Department of Child and Teenage Oncology at Gustave Roussy cancer research hospital in Paris, was reluctant to stop Lucas’ treatments. Until about a year and a half ago, Lucas was still taking everolimus once every day.

“I didn’t know when to stop, or how, because there was no other reference in the world,” Grill said.

While Lucas is the only one in the clinical trial whose tumor has completely disappeared, seven other children have been considered “long responders” to everolimus, meaning their tumors have not progressed for more than three years after starting treatment.

cancer, childhood cancer, pediatric cancer, kids, medicine, healthcare, research, innovation, clinical trials, DIPG Lucas Jemeljanova with his mother (Facebook) (lesja Jemeljanova / Facebook)

So why did everolimus work so well for Lucas? Doctors think that an extremely rare genetic mutation in Lucas’ tumor “made its cells far more sensitive to the drug,” Grill said, while the drug worked well in other children because of the “biological peculiarities” of their tumors.

While everolimus is by no means a cure, the trial has provided real hope for parents and families of children diagnosed with DIPG. Doctors must now work to better understand why Lucas’ tumor responded so well to the drug and how they can replicate those results in tumor “organoids”—artificially-grown cells that resemble an organ. After that, said Marie-Anne Debily, a researcher in the BIOMEDE trial, “the next step will be to find a drug that works as well on tumor cells.”

A more recent clinical trial tested a new immunotherapy treatment on young DIPG patients and showed promising results. Many of the patients' tumors shrank and several participants saw functional improvements in their symptoms and day-to-day lives. But only one of the 11 patients has seen success that rivals Lucas' — a young man identified only as Drew, who has been thriving tumor-free for over four years after receiving treatment.

Once considered a definitive death sentence, there is real hope for the first time. But there's much more research and work to be done. Until then, however, Lucas’ doctors are thrilled.

“Lucas’ case offers real hope,” said Debily.

cancer, childhood cancer, pediatric cancer, kids, medicine, healthcare, research, innovation, clinical trials, DIPG Lucas Jemeljanova with his parents and sister (lesja Jemeljanova / Facebook)

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.


For a fleeting moment leaving the chemotherapy treatment center, Josh Katrick forgot about the year he'd been having.

He'd just gotten an email telling him that — out of roughly 1,200 names — his was the one randomly selected from a raffle at Mario's Pizza in Northampton, Pennsylvania. A lot of free pizza was coming his way.

The family-owned local hot spot had held a promotion giving away two large pizzas and one two-liter beverage every month throughout 2017.  


"I remember coming out of [the chemo treatment center] thinking, 'I just won pizzas for a year!'" Katrick told WFMZ-TV 69 News of that moment in early December. "'That's cool!'"

Photo via Mario's Pizza, used with permission.

For Katrick, the news came amid quite a surreal few months.

The 36-year-old learned he has colon cancer in July. He had surgery in August and has since completed seven of 12 rounds of chemotherapy, NBC 10 News reported.

Photo via Mario's Pizza, used with permission.

"It’s been a fast time," he told the outlet. "It still feels like the blink of an eye."

Most people would argue a guy like Katrick is more than deserving of a few free slices considering what he's been through lately.

Katrick, however, had other plans in mind.

Katrick asked Mario's — his favorite pizza joint in town — if his free pizza could be given to the Northampton Area Food Bank instead.

"I've been getting so much from family, friends — people I don't even know well — the last few months," he explained to WFMZ, that he didn't think a year's worth of free pizza should be spent on him.

GIF via WFMZ.

At first, Frank Grigoli, a manager and co-owner's son at Mario's, didn't know what to make of the request.

Before he knew Katrick wanted the pizza to be given to the food bank, Grigoli was a bit befuddled. Mario's has been in business 37 years, after all, and quality is baked into every bite — why would someone pass on a delicious free lunch?

After learning it was about helping Northampton's most vulnerable people, however, Grigoli says Katrick's request brought "tears of joy." "This guy has a big heart," he said.

Still, something was bothering him. "That night, I went to sleep and something didn’t feel right," Grigoli admits. The next day, he decided, "we’re gonna give [Katrick] a gift.”

Photo via Mario's Pizza, used with permission.

Inspired by Katrick's selfless deed, Mario's decided to give both Katrick and the food bank a free year of pizza.

"It's better to give than receive," said Giuseppe Aiello, whose father, Giovanni, co-owns the restaurant. "Especially during this time of year — Christmas — it's a great time to think about that and see examples of it around town."

The food bank can choose between having either the same deal Katrick won or throwing a pizza party with the entire year's worth of food and drinks — 24 large pizzas complemented with 12 two-liters — all at once, Grigoli tells Upworthy. So all in all, Mario's is giving away 48 pies to very deserving recipients next year.

Photo via Mario's Pizza, used with permission.

Free pizzas aside, things are looking good for Katrick in 2017.

Feeling better with the holidays here, and more than halfway through his chemo treatments, Katrick is expected to make a full recovery, according to NBC 10 News.

Regardless of his prognosis, though, Katrick is someone who always wants to see the glass as half-full.

“The old attitude of, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade," he said. "Life gave me pizza, so I made peace.”

Watch WFMZ-TV 69 News' report on Katrick's story below:

"Chemotherapy is brutal. The goal is pretty much to kill everything in your body without killing you."

That's what Rashida Jones said in Oprah Magazine back in 2009 while discussing her mother's cancer.

Jones at the 2010 Stand Up to Cancer event. Jones has been an outspoken advocate for supporting cancer treatment. Photo by Handout/Getty Images.


And it's true. While chemotherapy has been one of our greatest weapons in fighting cancer, it can be merciless to the person who has to go through it. Side effects include hair loss, pain, fatigue, trouble concentrating, and stomach issues. It can even sometimes cause long-term damage to your heart, lungs, or other organs.

That's why researchers have devoted a ton of time to trying to create better, more precise, less-like-dropping-a-bomb-into-your-veins treatments.

And researchers in Canada, led by professor Sylvain Martell of the Polytechnique Montréal Nanorobotics Laboratory, might have just created something amazing – a kind of remote-controlled anti-cancer nanorobot. They published their findings in a paper titled "Magneto-gerotactic Bacteria Deliver Drug-containing Nanoliposomes to Tumour Hypoxic Regions."

Yeah, it's a mouthful, but the science behind it is pretty cool and not actually that hard to understand. Here's how it works:

Imagine your body's blood vessels like a gigantic hamster maze.

Hamsters are big fans of similes. Photo from iStock.

I know, kind of a weird metaphor, but stick with me here. Now, there are over 60,000 miles of blood vessels in our body all stitched together, so this is a pretty big maze. And somewhere in there, connected to the system, is our target – the tumor. But how do we get to it?

Standard chemotherapy is kind of like taking a big old bottle of chemicals and trying to just flood everything.

If the tube maze is full up to the top with chemicals, that tumor's definitely going to get treated, but so will, you know, everything else connected to that maze.

So as most chemo is trying to stop cancer's runaway growth, there tends to be a good amount of noncancer collateral damage to other growing cells (that's why chemo patients tend to lose their hair).

That's the (very simplified) standard chemo scenario.

This new technique, however, is like dropping the hamster into that maze, then leading it directly to the tumor with a carrot.

Only in this case, the hamster is actually tiny ocean-going bacteria called magnetococcus. Magnetococcus is special because it has a kind of built-in compass that it uses to orient itself in the big, wide ocean. If it ever gets lost, it can use that compass to wiggle its way back home.

What the researchers figured out they can do is take some of those bacteria, load them up with special, cancer-fighting chemicals, then inject them into the patient. Then, by using computer-controlled magnets outside the patient's body, they can tweak all those mini-compasses and lead the cancer-fighting bacteria straight to the tumor, like a hamster following its nose.

The scientists did not say if the bacteria got similarly adorable treats afterwards. Photo from iStock.

It's worth noting that a few other places have experimented with other kinds of nano-delivery schemes, but they weren't as precise partly because they didn't use things that could move on their own like these bacteria can.

There's some other cool things about this particular technique as well, like how the bacteria can naturally seek out hard-to-reach areas of the tumor that don't get a lot of oxygen and how they might be able to penetrate the brain's security-system-esque blood-brain barrier.

It's still in testing, but if this works, it could make chemotherapy far less brutal.

The nanorobotics lab. Photo by Polytechnique Montréal.

So far they've tested it in mice, and the researchers have obtained funding to try to put together a fully-equipped, human-sized setup. The government of Quebec even kicked in $1.85 million.

Chemotherapy is a life-saving invention, and it'd be hard for me to overstate how much it's changed cancer treatment. But anyone who's taken it or anyone who's watched a loved one go through it can tell you it's rough. Thanks to researchers like these, treating cancer one day might be a heck of a lot easier.

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A radiologist is flawlessly recreating famous celeb photos to help cancer patients.

Sometimes, a photo is worth a thousand words — and an amazing tool in helping cancer patients.

A patient broke down in front of Mark Udovitch and her tears changed his life forever.

She'd just lost her hair after undergoing chemotherapy and it was downright devastating for her — so much so, in fact, the patient said it was worse than losing her breast to cancer.

"This was a really profound thing to say," Udovitch, a radiologist from Australia, explained to Upworthy.


So he came up with an idea.

Udovitch decided to grow out his own hair so he could help people like her. Because — as the woman had explained — most of the wigs she had access to were itchy and looked fake. 

He wanted his hair, in some small way, to make a difference.

It wasn't long before Udovitch started getting comments about his longer, luscious locks.

Because apparently, he had some celebrity look-alikes.

Many folks started chiming in: Udovitch looked like the lead the singer of Creed, some said. And the lead singer of Nickelback, others noted. He got Kenny G too.

"Even Jesus," Udovitch added.

This sparked another idea: What if this funny celebrity intrigue over his hair could further help patients who could use it? 

Thus, a new campaign was born. And the (hilarious) evidence has spread all across the internet.

Udovitch decided to snap pics of himself recreating famous celebrity photos.

He did it to help benefit the charity Dry July — and the results are ... amazing.

Dry July is a group doing a whole lot of good benefitting cancer patients in ways that are often overlooked when we think about their quality of life. 

The nonprofit has helped fund worthwhile products and services at the Liverpool Cancer Therapy Center, where Udovitch works on the radiation oncology team. A few years ago, for instance, Dry July helped the center purchase much more comfortable chairs for patients undergoing chemotherapy — a treatment that entails sitting in one place for several hours — Udovitch explained.

Udovitch's hilarious photos are helping draw attention to Dry July's online fundraiser.

So far, members of his fundraising team — which also joined in on the photo fun — have raised over $20,000.

It's clear from his photos that Udovitch has his finger on the pulse of pop culture, too. Just look at his "Game of Thrones" re-creations.

He can also pull off "Star Wars."

I mean, he's got the lightsaber down and everything.

And he's basically part of the Kardashian-Jenner family now.

Move over, Kimye.

"Staff [at the cancer therapy center] loved that I managed to make a garbage bag, kitchen gloves and a Diet Coke-Mentos explosion look so good," he said.

The photos are lighthearted and fun, of course. But the underlying motivation behind Udovitch's re-creations is about far more than a few laughs.

"Working as a radiation therapist for the past eight years has given me incredible perspective on life and has taught me that you cannot take your health for granted," he said. 

"The idea that a charity like Dry July exists — and that their sole mission is to provide support and comfort to cancer patients across Australia — was one that I was very keen to support."

Soon, Udovitch's wavy locks will be gone. But there's still time for you to make a difference.

Udovitch will shave his head on July 29, 2016, at the Dry July Shave Off. (Unfortunately, the celebrity doppleganger remarks may disappear along with that long, brown hair.)

But you can still help his fundraising team do big things. They want to raise enough money to provide services like wireless music to patients during treatments — that way, patients can have customized playlists to help with their anxieties — and decorative artwork to give the department a splash of color (and look less like a cold, sterile clinic), Udovitch said.

To Udovitch, drawing attention to this campaign has been quite a ride.  "The entire experience has been overwhelming," he said. 

But it's certainly been worth it.

"Obviously our message is resonating well with everyone," he said. "And it is so great to see the general public get on-board with us so that we finish our fundraising campaign strong!"

If you're interested in supporting Udovitch's team, check out their fundraising page and learn more about their efforts on Facebook.