Doctors Left Speechless as Child’s Deadly Brain Tumor Vanishes

World’s First Child Cured of Deadly Brain Cancer: A 13-Year-Old’s Remarkable Story

In what doctors are calling an unprecedented medical breakthrough, a 13-year-old boy from Belgium has become the first child in the world to be cured of Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) — one of the most lethal childhood brain cancers.

Lucas Jemeljanova was diagnosed with the tumor at just six years old. For decades, DIPG has been considered a death sentence, with survival rarely extending beyond two years. But against all expectations, Lucas’s tumor completely disappeared following treatment in a European clinical trial, and today, seven years later, he is alive and free of disease.

A cancer once deemed “incurable”
DIPG is a highly aggressive tumor that grows in the brainstem, the part of the brain responsible for breathing and basic functions. Its position makes surgery impossible, and traditional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy have offered little more than temporary relief.

Doctors typically have to tell parents there is no cure. That was the same heartbreaking news given to Lucas’s family when he was first diagnosed.

A new trial, a new chance
Instead of accepting the usual course of palliative treatment, Lucas’s parents enrolled him in a groundbreaking clinical trial known as BIOMEDE (Biological Medicine for DIPG Eradication).

The trial took a different approach: rather than giving every child the same therapy, researchers performed a biopsy of the tumor, analyzed its genetic makeup, and assigned treatment based on its molecular profile.

Lucas was placed on everolimus, a drug already used in other cancers but never before proven effective in DIPG. What happened next stunned his doctors.

The tumor vanished
Serial brain scans showed the tumor shrinking after treatment. Over time, it completely disappeared.

Dr. Jacques Grill, the oncologist leading the program at Gustave Roussy Cancer Center in France, recalled his amazement: “I watched as the tumor completely disappeared from the scans. I don’t know of any other case like his in the world.”

Lucas continued treatment for several years before eventually stopping the medication on his own. Eighteen months later, the tumor has still not returned.

Why Lucas’s case is unique
Researchers believe Lucas’s DIPG carried an extremely rare mutation that made it unusually vulnerable to everolimus. While other children in the trial survived longer than average, none experienced the complete disappearance of the tumor like Lucas did.

Doctors caution that this is not yet a cure for all children with DIPG. For now, Lucas remains a remarkable exception — a proof that, under the right circumstances, this “incurable” disease can in fact be beaten.

What this means for the future
Scientists are now studying Lucas’s tumor cells in the lab to understand exactly why he responded so well. They are building tumor models, known as organoids, to replicate his biology and test whether new drugs could reproduce the same effect in other patients.

It could take more than a decade before this research translates into widely available treatments. Still, the case has sparked global hope in the medical community and among families affected by DIPG.

A new chapter in pediatric oncology
For doctors, the news offers both inspiration and challenge. DIPG remains one of the deadliest childhood cancers, but Lucas’s case shows that with precision medicine and targeted therapies, even the most hopeless diagnoses may one day have answers.

For Lucas and his family, it means something far more personal: a future once thought impossible.