(2/2) “You have to have faith and keep working. Back in the...

(2/2) “You have to have faith and keep working. Back in the 70’s and 80’s, all of us were hoping for just a single survivor of stage four neuroblastoma. It was a rare cancer and we just couldn’t cure it. But eventually we figured it out. Recently over five hundred people attended a party we threw for neuroblastoma survivors. So change does happen. It just happens slowly. I have a colleague who lost hope recently. He’s been working on a brain tumor called DIPG, and he’s had nothing but three decades of negative outcomes. Dozens and dozens of failed trials. We just couldn’t touch the tumor because it’s in the main center of the brain. But my colleague stayed optimistic. He kept cheering us on. But he finally lost hope. After three decades of losing kids, he asked to not see any more DIPG patients. Then guess what happened. We finally have a survivor on our hands. Our neurosurgeon Dr. Souweidane figured out how to insert a catheter directly into the tumor. And we now have a girl that is 3.5 years from diagnosis. It’s still early, but it’s promising. She plays tennis. She plays violin. And she is gorgeous.”