Eleven-Year-Old Boy With Rare Cancer Is Youngest Patient To Receive Gene Targeted Cancer Therapy
SANTA MONICA (CBSLA) - A Seattle father brought his son to Santa Monica in hopes of one thing: finding a cure for his 11-year-old son who is battling a rare form of cancer.
Kian Faghih was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a cancer of the heart and skeletal muscle which originated from another part of his body and has now spread to his lungs.
"At the end they said that there is no cure for him and we cannot do anything for him. That's why we started looking," Jamshid Faghih, Kian's father said.
Kian has battled with cancer for two and a half years. After being told that there were no other options, his father found Dr. Erlinda Gordon from the Sarcoma Oncology Center in Santa Monica. The Faghihs reached out to Dr. Gordon to see if Kian could receive an experimental treatment she created called, DeltaRex-G, an innovative gene-targeted cancer therapy.
Gordon said yes, making Kian the youngest patient to receive DeltaRex-G.
"His prognosis, really, this is his last hope. He's tried everything … as soon as he got here, we were able to give it to him the same day he arrived," Gordon said.
For almost three weeks, Kian has been receiving infusions of DeltaRex-G. Unlike chemotherapy, there are no harsh side effects with this treatment since it's a genetic medicine that directly targets the tumor.
"It will go there and nowhere else so it doesn't cause collateral damage," Gordon said. "What it does is it sends the message to the cancer cell to stop dividing. It's not only the cancer cells themselves that Delta Rex kills. It also kills the blood supply of the tumor."
Jamshid has already seen improvements in Kian, who will be receiving his last treatment of DeltaRex-G on Friday.
"The medication that he's getting here (Kian) started having better breathing and he was feeling more comfortable," Jamshid said. "It feels great, it's like a miracle for us."
However, this treatment is not available through drug or insurance companies, but through a non-profit public charity founded by Dr. Gordon. The Fanghihs have started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to get more medicine for Kian and other cancer patients treated through the AVENI Foundation.
Additional information on the AVENI Foundation can be found here.