Inside Pediatrics Winter 2018

NOVEL CANCER THERAPY SQUARES UP AGAINST LEUKEMIA

Children’s of Alabama is among a handful of healthcare facilities nationwide to offer chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, which has shown promise in fighting hard-to-treat blood cancers.

W restling is 12-year-old Hayden Parker’s favorite sport to watch, but in his day-to-day life, he takes on an opponent far more challenging than his favorite televised wrestling competitor. For the past four years, Hayden has personally wrestled with pre-B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a cancer of the white blood cells. When Hayden was diagnosed, he and his father, Bryan Qualls, who live just outside Birmingham, Alabama, were faced with the unexpected. Following a visit to the pediatrician for Hayden’s fever and bruising on his legs, Qualls received a call he never expected. “The pediatrician told us to go immediately to Children’s of Alabama because Hayden’s lab work results looked like he had leukemia,” said Qualls. That day, Hayden became one of the approximately 3,000 children and adolescents who are diagnosed with the disease in the U.S. each year. “Typically, about 90 percent of ALL patients are cured with intensive chemotherapy treatment,” said Matthew Kutny M.D., director of the Leukemia, Lymphoma and Histiocytosis Program in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and the Alabama Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children’s of Alabama. “Unfortunately, Hayden’s leukemia has been harder to cure,” Kutny said. “He has been through a number of different cycles of chemotherapy treatments and has not stayed in remission.” Over the years, Hayden has experienced several relapses and life-threatening health issues due to the harsh effects of chemotherapy. He has lived with a compromised immune system and some of his organs have been adversely affected. “He would take all of the medications, the treatments, and then relapse, and then he would have to do it all over again,” Qualls said. “You don’t want to have to see your kid go through this – it’s just heartbreaking. As a parent you just want to protect them, and you can’t take this away from them. They just have to fight it, and you are their support staff. You have to cheer them on to just keep going.”

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