Help beat cancer – brick by brick
Buy a brick to help build a new, world-leading Children's Cancer Centre. Together, we can beat cancer for more kids.
Bigger breakthroughs to help save childhoods like Alyssa’s
The innovative new Children’s Cancer Centre will be a home for state-of-the-art equipment and facilities and groundbreaking research to happen side by side. It will offer new hope for families like Alyssa’s. So, when you buy a brick, you’ll be helping to beat cancer for more kids.
Alyssa was 12 when she was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
She began a long treatment journey, going through harsh chemotherapy and even a bone marrow transplant. But it didn’t cure her and the only option left was palliative care, while they searched for a clinical trial she could join.
"I said to my doctor in Sheffield: ‘Please don’t give up on me, I’m not ready to die yet."
- Alyssa, Great Ormond Street Hospital patient
New technology, new hope
Alyssa’s doctor found her a trial at GOSH. For the first time, new cell-editing technology that had showed promise in treating B-cell leukaemia would be used to treat T-cell leukaemia too.
In her CAR-T therapy, Alyssa’s healthy donor T-cells were edited to convert single letters of the DNA code. This stopped them being attacked by Alyssa’s own immune system, but enabled them to recognise and attack cancerous cells.
Making history – and a better future
Alyssa received her base-edited CAR-T cells on 4 May 2022 – what her family call “cell day”.
She was the first person in the world to have CAR-T cell therapy for T-cell leukaemia.
Every test since has shown that Alyssa is cancer-free.
Cancer takes so much
Alyssa has her future back, but she’ll have life-long follow-up care.
“People think, when treatment's done, everything's back to normal,” says Alyssa. “Nothing will go back to normal.”
You’re left with physical and mental effects afterwards. But despite missing two years of school, Alyssa passed all her GCSEs. She’s now 17 and doing her A-levels.
“It makes me so happy that I’m here now,” she says. “I get to spend more time with the people I love.”
Building the Children’s Cancer Centre
“When I first saw the plans for the new Children's cancer Centre, it brought a tear to my eye,” says Kiona, Alyssa’s mum (pictured with Alyssa above).. “It's amazing. Having a place that familiar, safe space for the children and families, is really important. And to have it all together – the CT scans, ultrasounds, all the appointments and tests.”
“So many people are so passionate about solving this, I find it amazing,” says Alyssa. “I appreciate everybody donating towards the new cancer centre and to research, it saves so many more lives than you would ever think.”
