The revolutionary treatment that gave a future back to little Layla

Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital successfully used 'designer immune cells' to treat Layla Richards’ cancer

Layla Richards is back at home for Christmas with her mother, Lisa (Alex Lentati)

The parents of an 18-month-old girl who was treated for an “incurable” form of leukaemia with pioneering genetic therapy have spoken of their joy that she is cancer-free and back home with her family for Christmas.

Layla Richards’ parents, Lisa and Ashleigh, had been warned to prepare for the worst after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukaemia, but doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) successfully used “designer immune cells” to treat the cancer.

They were told that palliative care was her only option, but the life-saving treatment has been a complete success and she is now back home in Enfield, north London.

The couple have backed The Independent’s Give to GOSH campaign, which will allow the hospital to continue to research the cutting-edge treatments that saved their daughter’s life.

“Layla has a purpose – to help other people. As parents we could be happy and take our child and run away, but it is our choice to speak about it,” said Ashleigh.

“She has been given a chance and we need to take that chance and push it on to other people. We can’t just go home and say we have our lovely child now – we wanted to help.

“She was nearly at death’s door. You don’t normally hear a happy story with cancer.

“One day there will be a cure for all cancer. Who knows? Maybe in 40 years’ time Layla may have helped to make the first step towards that.”

Layla was just three months old when she was diagnosed with leukaemia, but did not respond to chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant and on the day before her first birthday her family were advised to go through palliative care.

But Layla’s parents refused to give up on her and medical staff offered a highly experimental therapy that had only been tested in the laboratory. Molecular scissors were used to precisely engineer the DNA inside a donor’s immune cells. These cells were designed to seek out and kill only the cancerous cells and to be immune to the strong drugs given to patients.

The designer cells were then injected into Layla and once she was cancer-free she was treated with a second bone marrow transplant to restore her immune system.

Ashleigh said: “When they mentioned palliative care I refused to talk to them. I didn’t want to think about giving up.”

For the treatment to go ahead Layla’s team had to call an emergency ethics committee. Ashleigh took Layla into the meeting with him to try to convince the doctors to carry out the procedure. He said: “I took Layla in on my shoulders and said, ‘does this look like a child who is dying? She is a strong character, she’s like a tank.’ We were begging them, saying, ‘you can’t give up. I won’t give up on my child’. We stayed positive. We said to the doctors there has to be a first.”

Lisa added: “When we first came to hospital I said I wanted the standard treatment that everybody else has, because I didn’t want her to be a guinea pig. But life is funny sometimes. She needed to be this guinea pig – she has got a purpose to help other people.”

To Give to GOSH go to: http://ind.pn/1Mydxqt

To find out more about our appeal and why we're supporting GOSH go to: http://ind.pn/1MycZkr

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