THE family of a four-year-old girl fighting a rare and aggressive cancer have welcomed a decision to fund a treatment on the NHS that could offer her and other Scots children fresh hope.

Rebecca McKenna was diagnosed with stage 4 high-risk Neuroblastoma in January this year. Only 40% of children diagnosed with the disease will survive.

Her parents are pinning twin hopes on a new treatment that has just been approved in Scotland and a vaccine, only available in New York, which could help prevent her high-relapse rate cancer returning.

Children with Neuroblastoma require many rounds of complex, gruelling and intensive treatments including several rounds of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. Even if treatment is successful, there is an 80% chance of it coming back. Less than half of children diagnosed with it will survive.

Glasgow Times:

Next month Rebecca, who is from Erskine, will begin a six-month course of the immunotherapy drug Qarziba (dinutuxima beta), which has been shown to reduce the chance of recurrence by 20% and is already available elsewhere in the UK.

Chris and his wife Vicky, 34, are also celebrating achieving a fundraising target of £140,000 to send Rebecca to the world-renowned Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York next year for a vaccine, which also aims to prevent a life-threatening relapse.

Rebecca’s dad, Chris, 38, said: “For children with neuroblastoma there is massive chance of it recurring - 80% in fact.

“The drug that she is starting could reduce this by 20%. It may not sound like a huge number but for us it is absolutely massive.”

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On average, every week, two families in the UK will learn that their child has neuroblastoma, with approximately 100 children diagnosed each year.

Rebecca was diagnosed on January 1 this year after complaining of sore legs, which her parents attributed to growing pains. Her family say she has coped well with the rigorous treatment, which has now been completed at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow.

Glasgow Times:

Chris said: “Things are going as well as can be. Rebecca is doing great. Since February, she has really bounced back.

“Some children really struggle with the treatment but she has sailed through it. She had a bad couple of weeks when she was getting the high dose chemo and a stem cell transplant but that was expected.

“It’s been hard, mentally and financially but we’ve go there.

“If it wasn’t for Rebecca, I don’t know where we would be because she’s been so strong.

“At the moment, she’s just a normal little girl. Apart from not having any hair you would never know.

“She’s just a normal wee girl who loves to sing and dance. That’s all she does.

“We start the new treatment next month. All going well, it’s only a couple of hospital stays. She gets it through a Hickman line in hospital but once she comes home, it will be delivered in a wee backpack.”

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Neuroblastoma is the most frequently-occurring solid tumour in infants under the age of one, accounting for around a fifth (22%) of all cancers diagnosed at this age.

In Scotland, it is estimated that around seven children each year could be eligible for the drug, now it has been approved by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC).

Tony Heddon, Chairman of Neuroblastoma UK, who said ‘This is fantastic news for the families in Scotland of newly diagnosed children with this cancer and ensures that they will receive the same standard of care as other children in the rest of the UK’.

“It is imperative that children have access to the latest treatments and that we continue to invest in research into this terrible disease. Through doing so we will improve survival from 40% to 85% as has been achieved in childhood leukaemia.”