Woody was a happy, cheeky three-year-old. He attended nursery, loved playing with dinosaurs and getting up to mischief.
With the knee pain and rash, Woody’s parents Jack and Paige knew something was wrong and took him to the doctor who ordered some blood tests. But they didn’t show anything.
Woody started to get restless, and he lost his appetite – something which was very unusual for him. So, his parents took him to hospital where he had some scans.
To his parent’s horror, the scan revealed that he had lots of large lymph nodes suggesting that he may have cancer.
We just couldn’t believe what we were being told. We felt sick – our beautiful baby boy had cancer. It completely broke us.
Jack, Woody's dad
Woody was diagnosed with metastatic neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer that originates from developing nerve cells. His cancer had spread to his bones, bone marrow and lymph nodes. Sadly, high risk neuroblastoma has one of the lowest survival rates of all childhood cancers, with less than half of children surviving this aggressive disease.
2020 went by in a flash of trips in and out of hospital, by the end of the year Woody had started seven rounds of chemotherapy. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic it meant Woody and Jack were unable to spend Christmas with Paige and their other two children – Freddie, eight and Phoebe, six.
Disappointingly, the chemo did not work and Woody's parents were at a loss as to what to do, untill they found out about the MiNivAN trial.
They just wanted Woody to get better and knew a trial would give him a chance, but also that it could help someone else down the road.
Led by Dr Juliet Gray, at the Centre for Cancer Immunology, the MiNivAN study combines 131-I mIBG targeted radiation therapy with two different antibodies, Nivolumab and Dinutuximab beta. Dinituximab beta, an anti-GD2 antibody, has been widely used in neuroblastoma and targets the cancer cells, allowing them to be seen and killed by one's own the immune system.
In contrast, Nivolumab targets the immune system rather than the tumour itself, boosting the body's immune response to the cancer. The study, funded by Solving Kids Cancer, hopes to prove that when these antibodies are provided in combination with the mIGB therapy, it will mutually enhance these complementary effects, and leave children with long term immunity against their disease.
Within just nine weeks of being on the trial, Woody’s condition improved. Jack said: “It was incredible. When we started the trial, Woody had six cancer spots in his legs – after a few weeks they were almost gone. When the nurse told us, we didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream or shout. It was amazing.”
Speaking about taking part in the trial, Jack added: “We’ve gone through hell and we didn’t want others to experience that, so we wanted to take part. I didn’t realise how many children are affected by cancer but seeing them on the wards brought it home.”
Woody is now five years old and wants to do everything a five-year-old wants to do – get muddy in the park, play with his dinosaurs and monster trucks, even start school.
Following his remarkable reaction to the trial, he is continuing treatment to ensure all the cancer is gone.
Work in the laboratory has shown that combining radiation therapy with two different types of antibodies, one which targets the tumour and one which targets the immune system, is potentially a very powerful way of eradicating neuroblastoma tumours and they appear to work together to generate strong, protective immunity to the tumour. The MINivAN trial is testing if this can be achieved in patients.
The trial is progressing well, and we are delighted with some of the results we’ve seen. There is still a long way to go however, and we need to make sure we have the evidence to support the use of this treatment in the clinic. We’d like to thank everyone who has taken part in the trial so far and supported us, we will not rest until we have found a cure for cancer.
Dr Juliet Gray