It’s a new application for a cancer medicine that traditionally helps adults. But when it was given to young patients with the most common form of childhood leukemia, it was a game-changer.
Every story has a heroine, and in this one her name is Guinevere.
Guinevere was first diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, a type of blood cancer, in 2020.
“She’s a tough kid and she handled everything better than I would have!” her mother Victoria Boyer said.
Dr Rebecca McFall is a pediatric oncologist at Advocate Children’s Hospital.
“It is the most common type of childhood leukemia,” she said.
Standard chemotherapy for the young patients – often pre-school-aged — lasts two-and-a-half years.
“The first 6-12 months is intensive where they are in and out of the hospital and in clinic multiple days of the week,” McFall said. “It is a very long road.”
The Boyers took that road twice. Unfortunately, Guinevere relapsed in 2024.
“I noticed a lymph node behind her ear, and it was sizeable,” Victoria said.
The news came just as doctors were learning the results from a clinical trial for a drug called blinatumomab.
“This was blockbuster in July 2024 when the data came out,” McFall said. “It caused us to stop all other clinical trials because it would be unethical not to offer this to all of our B-cell ALL patients.”
Blina, as it’s known, blew doctors away. The drug works with the patient’s own immune system – recruiting healthy T-cells to kill the cancer cells. And patients like Guinevere can wear the medicine. A special backpack holds the drug during a continuous 28-day infusion.
“I can play with my friends,” she said.
“She would walk around with her Blina backpack,” Victoria said. “She was able to do things. She felt good on it. She was able to go to the park and be around people.”
“We’ve had kids go to school, they go to the playground, so when you see that little kid running around they may or may not have hair, but they’ve got a backpack on, that may be what’s going on,” McFall said.
While the boyers hope it will take another relapse off the table, Dr McFall says the drug has been a powerhouse, particularly for newly diagnosed patients who haven’t yet received chemotherapy and therefore have stronger immune systems.
“Patients with newly diagnosed b-cell ALL who received two cycles of blinatumomab really benefitted and had fewer relapses if they received it,” she said. “This has dramatically changed our protocol, our processes.”
“Just to know that new technology, new advancements, are coming out to help the survival rates … it’s truly amazing,” Victoria said. “And that is why awareness and funding toward research is just so critical.”
The Boyers say they’re sharing their story to bring awareness to pediatric cancer, which receives just four percent of federal research funds.
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