A five-year-old boy diagnosed with an ultra-rare cancer that affects just 100 children each year has been given a second chance with a US trial.
Archie Wilks, 5, from Saffron Walden, Essex, was diagnosed with stage four high-risk neuroblastoma in January 2019.
Since his diagnosis, Archie has undergone several rounds of chemotherapy, had surgery to remove a kidney tumour, and even tested positive for Covid at the start of the pandemic, Hertfordshire Live reports.
His condition - neuroblastoma - is ultra-rare and mostly targets infants and young children under the age of five. Doctors diagnose just 100 children with the cancer each year.
For the past three years the family has been raising funds for young Archie to be a subject on a trial treatment in the US.
The procedures are not currently available on the NHS - so family, friends, and even complete strangers, have chipped in a massive £230,000 to give Archie as much help as he needs
To prepare for the trial, Archie has started a gruelling course of radiotherapy.
He will have daily doses for a month at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, before six months of immunotherapy.
The US treatment - which is a vaccine to prevent a neuroblastoma relapse - then starts around six to seven months later. He will have to visit the states five times over the course of a year.
"We're getting the ball rolling and sorting out visas and everything else and liaising with the medical centre over there," said Archie's dad Simon, 33.
"We've had quite a few stop-start situations and complications and things [over the last three years] and had one of those recently, so everything was a little bit put on hold and then back up and rolling now."
Simon said his son's strength is a source of immense pride.
"Everyone's been affected by what he's had to go through the last three years and everything else but he's just so strong and he makes us proud," he said.
"He just makes it a lot easier to crack on with, he just takes whatever is thrown at him. He just takes it on the chin, laughs and smiles and gets on with it.
"He has down times as you'd expect but he quickly rebounds."
Archie and his family say they can't wait to ring his end of treatment bell so they can head to the US to begin the vaccine trial.
You can still donate to Archie's fundraising page by clicking here.
