New cancer hope as a pill ‘annihilates all solid tumors’ — thanks to this little girlBy Marc Lallanilla
August 2, 2023
Cancer has a powerful new enemy — and it is fueled by a 9-year-old girl with an unforgettable smile.
Researchers have developed a drug containing a molecule called AOH1996 that “appears to annihilate all solid tumors” in preclinical research — while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
The drug AOH1996 is named after Anna Olivia Healey, a cancer patient from Indiana who was born in 1996.
“I knew I wanted to do something special for that little girl,” Linda Malkas of City of Hope in Duarte, California, a leading cancer research center, said in a statement received by The Post.
“She died when she was only 9 years old from neuroblastoma, a children’s cancer that affects only 600 kids in America each year.”
Malkas met Anna’s family just before their little girl died in 2005 after a devastating battle with the cancer. Neuroblastoma starts in very early forms of nerve cells, most often found in an embryo or a fetus, according to the American Cancer Society.
“I met Anna’s father when she was at her end stages … he asked if I could do something about neuroblastoma and he wrote my lab a check for $25,000,” she said. “That was the moment that changed my life — my fork in the road.”
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/08/02/new-cancer-hope-as-pill-kills-tumors-thanks-to-little-girl/
