Lily's story
4 min read 25 August 2023
Lily was only 5 years old when she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive type of brain cancer, one with a survival rate that hasn’t improved in decades.
Lily’s mum, Alicia, remembers how frightened she felt sending her young daughter into surgery to have the tumour removed.
Imagine having to sign a form, saying your child may basically die on the operating table of a stroke or hundreds and hundreds of different things that could have happened.
- Alicia, Lily's mum
The surgery was a success, but the ordeal wasn’t over for Lily or her family. To stop the tumour from returning, Lily would go on to have 33 sessions of radiation therapy.
Scary side-effects
Every single day, parents of kids with cancer face agonising choices—knowing that treatments that could save their child’s life might damage them in other ways.
There is no doubt that conventional treatments like radiation therapy save lives like Lily’s. But they can also—in some cases—cause side effects that may leave lasting health consequences, affecting children mentally, physically, and emotionally for the rest of their lives. This can have a huge impact on not only the child’s life, but their entire family.
To further reduce the chances of her cancer returning, Lily was also offered chemotherapy as part of a clinical trial. But Alicia and Greg were worried about the long-term effects.
We were told things like she could have learning difficulties, and she might not pick up things as fast as other kids, and that everything could be just that little bit more of a challenge for her, her mobility, her coordination, all of that might be a little bit off.
- Alicia
For Lily's parents, the weight of making these decisions and the stress that comes with having your child undergo cancer treatment made for a very difficult and emotional time.
I would wait in the hospital for Lily to be asleep and I would just cry and cry, and that was the only time that I could get it out, because I never wanted her to see that.
- Alicia
Lily dressed up as her favourite superheroes for every radiotherapy session.
Kinder, safer more effective treatments
Thanks to recent research breakthroughs, new therapies are being developed to save families like Lily's from heartbreak.
Immunotherapies are new treatment options that can spare patients from the devastating side effects associated with radiation and chemotherapy treatments.
Immunotherapies involve removing a patient’s T-cells, re-engineering them in a lab and delivering them back into the body to attack and kill the cancer cells. This kind of therapy is tailored to each patient by harnessing their own immune system.
While immunotherapy holds great promise, it’s still not effective for everyone and every type of cancer.
Further research will give hope to more families - hope that we can find more effective treatments with less side effects and improve survival rates.
Without research, Lily wouldn’t be alive today.
- Alicia
Now twelve years old, has received a clear result from her final scan, making her officially considered ‘cancer free’.
Without all the research done in the past, Lily probably wouldn’t be here. That’s why we need more research because many other families aren’t us lucky as us.
- Alicia
Immunotheraphy breakthroughs in childhood cancers
As you may know, Peter Mac is Australia’s only public hospital dedicated solely to improving the prevention, detection and treatment of cancer.
Our team of 750 researchers is dedicated to overcoming cancer through world-leading cancer research. One of them, Dr Deborah Meyran, is looking specifically at how a child’s own immune system might be used to overcome their cancer.
No kid should be ill. No kid should have all their hair fall out, have their body damaged. We need to offer these kids a better option. We need to find new therapies especially for kids. We need to cure them for life.
- Dr Deborah Meyran
As part of her research, Dr Meyran is testing a type of immunotherapy called CAR T-cell therapy. This involves taking some of a person’s cells from their immune system and ‘activating’ them to recognise and attack cancer cells. These cells are then injected back into the patient, where they seek out the cancer cells and destroy them.
Dr Meyran and her team will be testing the effectiveness of CAR T-cell therapy to make sure it’s safe and effective for children like Lily.
Dr Meyan is working to develop new immunotherapy approaches for children with cancer
CAR T-cell therapy has already proven life-saving for children with B-acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Around 80% of children respond to the treatment and remain disease-free after a single injection of the reprogrammed cells.
This means there is real hope that Dr Meyran's research could rapidly translate into life-saving new treatments for brain cancer patients like Lily.
This is a revolution, and I want to be part of this revolution. I want to give a better life to these kids.
- Dr Deborah Meyran
How you can help
Every 2 minutes, a child is diagnosed with cancer. And not every family is as lucky as Lily's was. We desperately need more research to find treatments and cures for all types of cancers.
But a lack of funding means potentially life-saving discoveries like Dr Meyran's could be delayed, pushed aside or, even worse, abandoned altogether.
By donating today, you will make a real difference to families like Lily's.
If we can stop just one family going through what we went through, or God forbid, losing their child, it’s totally worth it.
- Alicia
Lily with her parents, Alicia and Greg, and her baby brother
Your kind support gives us all hope for discovering more life-saving cures for all cancers.
