Jessica's campaign

In April 2021, Jessica was diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma, a rare and aggressive childhood cancer that has a 40-50% chance of long-term survival at diagnosis. After Jessica was diagnosed, she started the standard frontline treatment path immediately, but the disease has not responded as hoped.  

Her family are fundraising for potentially life-saving treatment for Jessica, and because Jessica has refractory disease, her treatment options are more limited. Treatment not available through the NHS can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Follow Jessica's story on social media.

Jessica’s story 

Leading up to Jessica’s first birthday, her parents Nathan and Anisa noticed Jessica wasn’t her usual self. She was restless during the nights, which they had attributed to her teething. A few weeks later, they noticed dark circles appearing under Jessica’s eyes, so they contacted their GP and were referred to their local hospital for an eye appointment. Due to the waiting times, Jessica’s parents, Nathan and Anisa, decided to take her to A&E at James Paget Hospital where she was kept overnight for tests to be carried out. 

The very next day they were told by the doctor that they believed Jessica had neuroblastoma and she was sent by ambulance to Addenbrooke's hospital. Jessica had a biopsy the following day and on the 22nd April 2021, Jessica was diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma. She began Rapid COJEC chemotherapy immediately. 

Treatment so far 

After completing eight rounds of chemotherapy, Jessica's scans came back showing less than a 50% reduction in overall disease. As a result of this, Jessica went on to have a further eight rounds of chemotherapy, which continued to reduce the disease, but unfortunately not enough for Jessica to be considered eligible for the next stages of frontline treatment - surgery and a stem cell transplant. 

In March 2022, Jessica enrolled on the MiNivAn trial at Southampton Hospital. This therapy aims to improve outcomes for children with relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma by combining targeted radiotherapy (I-131 MIBG) with immunotherapy antibodies anti-GD2 (ch14.18/CHO) and anti-PD1 (Nivolumab). Jessica’s initial scans showed broadly stable disease, which was disappointing. 

Jessica’s second set of scans during the trial showed improvement, with a considerable amount of disease having reduced. She completed the trial in November 2022 and final scans showed little change. Although scans showed a significant reduction in the amount of disease in Jessica’s body, after the trial she still had more spots than they’d hoped. There was uncertainty over whether or not the next treatment step of high-dose chemotherapy was the best option for Jessica.

In February 2023 Jessica had reassessment scans to determine how active the remaining spots of disease were, and incredibly the results showed no active disease. After undergoing a biopsy of her liver, where there had been persistent disease from diagnosis, the family were informed that no neuroblastoma cells were found.  As a result, it was decided that high-dose chemotherapy would not be the best next step for Jessica and instead in May, she started 6 months of retinoic acid. Jessica tolerated this well with minimal side effects.

In August, the family and their treating team decided there was no need to continue with this treatment as there had been little change since Jessica started.

Scans in September showed the great news there had been no change in her disease since her previous scans in February, and Jessica continues to have no active cancer cells.

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_{Solving Kids' Cancer UK's children's fundraising campaigns} 

_{Funds raised will go towards helping Jessica and her family. If Jessica no longer needs the funds or is in remission five years post the end of successful treatment, the funds will be used to support other children and families affected by neuroblastoma through our activities. For children with high-risk neuroblastoma, like Jessica, the survival rate is much lower than other childhood cancers. Upon relapse, this rate reduces even further.}