More clinical trials offered for cancer patients at Montreal Children’s Hospital

The Montreal Children’s Hospital is doubling the number of cancer clinical trials for children and teens. It’s being offered over a five-year span, after receiving a large donation on Wednesday.

In Quebec, cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease in children and adolescents with Fuel Transport donated $1 million to the hospital in support of discovering better treatments that could potentially help the most aggressive and incurable cancers.

“For far too many children with cancer, clinical trials are their only chance at survival,” said Dr. Caterine Vézina, Director of the Hematology-Oncology Division at The Montreal Children’s Hospital. “By opening more clinical trials, we provide our young patients with better access to experimental treatments that could improve survival rates and reduce the harsh side effects of current treatments.”

85 per cent of children survive their cancer diagnosis but 15 per cent will not

Dr. Vézina said the Children’s Hospital wants to rewrite these statistics and bring hope to those fighting for their lives.

“We were very happy, getting money for research is amazing it’s gonna help so many children,” Dr. Vézina said.

“It’s gonna change the way that we’re working day to day,”

“Pediatric trials are not really well funded and we don’t receive a lot of money from the government to have like a big team, she said.

“It’s a lot of work.”

Dimitri Lappos and his son Jameson, who battled leukemia, was present at the press conference where they shared their journey and of how the donation will help others like them who have navigated through a very difficult time. 

“Donations like Fuels today of a million dollars to clinical research is just so key because it allows the standard to be set so much higher and Jamie was able to have his childhood or you know a ‘quasi’ childhood and we were able to have a life,” he said.

Jameson was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia B cell A L L as 22 months old. Now, he is on a maintenanc therapy until June 2025. Lappos said the entire experience changed his family as they settle into the new normal.

“My job was just to make him have a good time,” He said. ” [To] make him laugh to make him smile to be silly that was my job.”

The Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) says it welcomes these new clinical trials, since it’s one of their research priorities in its 2030 vision.

“These trials embody our commitment to improving outcomes and setting new standards in pediatric cancer care,” Dr. Vézina said.

For many of these children, clinical trials are their only hop with CEO of Fuel Robert Piccioni saying the donation marks the inauguration of fuel transport’s papa George foundation, named after his father who passed away from cancer. Piccioni says they will continue fundraising for the children’s and other causes. 

“We believe that we could leverage the one million dollars and raise another million in three years,” he said. “I hope we go beyond that and I’m sure we’re going to just blow that out of the water.”