Gregory Friedman, a childhood cancer specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
A suburban Philadelphia company called Treovir developed a treatment by genetically modifying the virus so it would infect only cancer cells.
Through tiny tubes inserted in the tumors, doctors gave the altered virus to 12 patients ages 7 to 18 whose cancer had worsened after usual treatments.He lived for a year and four months after that,†long enough to celebrate his bar mitzvah, go with his family to Hawaii and see a brother be born, said his father, Josh Kestler, a financial services executive from Livingston, New Jersey.
Jake died April 11, 2019, but “we have no regrets whatsoever†about trying the treatment, said Kestler, who with his wife has started a foundation, Trail Blazers for Kids, to further research.“It’s a devastating disease for these patients and their families,†and the early results suggest the virus treatment is helping, but they need to be verified in a larger study, which doctors are planning, said Dr.