June 20, 2001
Research fast-tracked for boy dying of cancer
Likely too late for seven-year-old James Birrell

Heather Sokoloff
National Post

The Hospital for Sick Children has awarded two $25,000 grants for research into a rare cancer using funds raised by the community of a boy who is dying of the disease.

The grants have been fast-tracked by the hospital so the research can begin immediately.

"I've never seen anything like this. The breadth and scope of it is quite remarkable," said Malcolm Burrows, a director at the hospital's charitable foundation.

"There's always that sense there's this long and elaborate process. It takes months and months and months to do it. This was very unusual," Mr. Burrows added.

The funds were raised largely in $10 and $20 donations from residents of Peterborough, where the young cancer patient, James Birrell, lives.

Yesterday, the seven-year-old, who suffers from neuroblastoma, telephoned Raymond Reilly, a nuclear pharmacist, to congratulate him on his grant. "I hope your research is able to help children," James told Dr. Reilly.

Dr. Reilly is one of only a few nuclear pharmacists in Canada able to prepare a radioactive mixture to see where the neuroblastoma tumours that attack the central nervous system are growing in children's bodies.

He will experiment with increasing the amounts of the radioactive ingredients he uses to detect the tumours in an effort to attack the cancer cells, a process that has been successful in his previous research on breast cancer.

The other $25,000 grant is going to Jeremy Squire, a molecular biologist at the Ontario Cancer Institute, who has been using DNA information found in the Human Genome Project to see if genetic factors are to blame for the low success rate in treating neuroblastoma tumours.

He examines DNA in tumours surgically removed from patients. The process costs his lab $600 a tumour.

Although the Hospital for Sick Children accelerated the normally time-consuming process of doling out money collected through charitable donations, the results of Dr. Reilly's and Dr. Squire's work will likely come too late for James.

The boy has been near death six times since he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of four. Each time, he managed to beat the odds by bouncing back, even after cardiac arrest.

But last month, he relapsed again when the cancer moved to his brain.

He could die any day.

Dr. Reilly, who has met James and shown him cancer cells in his lab, is on an e-mail list set up by James' father, Syd, who sends e-mails to tens of thousands of people around the world with weekly updates on his son's condition, posted at www.jamesbirrell.ca

"That never happened to me before," said Dr. Reilly of the phone call from James, from his lab at Toronto General Hospital, where he works as one of only a handful of nuclear pharmacists in Canada.

"There is a movement now to have researchers meet cancer patients, and so I've sat next to breast cancer survivors at dinner fundraisers, but I've never had one call me to wish me good luck with my research."