East Lothian schoolgirl among youngsters to benefit from gentler leukaemia treatment

Romyn Winters was first diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia back in 2018, after her parents Lisa and John noticed that she was unable to walk properly.

The couple, from Dunbar, said: “We were on holiday in Yorkshire when we noticed Romyn’s leg was starting to look weak and she was crawling instead of walking, and then she started to get more unwell and stopped eating.”

The toddler received chemotherapy, which her parents said had harsh side effects and made her sick.

Just 18 months after celebrating the end of her treatment, the family learned that Romyn had relapsed and the cancer was back.

They were then faced with a difficult choice - to watch Romyn undergo an invasive bone marrow transplant or to try blinatumomab, a new, targeted immunotherapy that tells the immune system to attack leukaemia cells, along with a lower dose of chemotherapy.

A Great Ormond Street Hospital study has found that blinatumomab reduces the need for intensive chemotherapy and eliminates deaths linked to treatment in children with relapsed leukaemia.

Led by doctors at the the leading children’s hospital, the study found children and young people with relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia can be treated safely with significantly less intensive chemotherapy.

“By this time Romyn was seven and we weighed up the options and what her future might look like,” her parents said.

“Blinatumomab sounded scary as it was unknown, but we thought it would give us more options if she didn’t respond to the treatment, and hopefully she’d recover more quickly as it sounded less severe than the stronger chemotherapy.

“Dr Baird and her team supported us really well and kept us informed every step of the way. After a few expected side effects to begin with in hospital, Romyn was coping well and was able to have blinatumomab at home via her pump in a backpack.

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“Within days, she was back playing on the trampoline with her brothers which was great to see.”

Romyn is now off treatment as is “recovering well” thanks to the blinatumomab, according to her parents.

“Since having her chemo port removed, she’s been able to take part in new childhood hobbies like her friends,” they said.

“We went on holiday to Tenerife and she learnt to swim in a week – we now can’t keep her away from a swimming pool.”

The UKALL Rel2020 study, published in the journal Leukemia, involved youngsters having less intensive chemotherapy before moving on to blinatumomab.

Some 188 children and young people aged one to 24 were included in the study, taken from 25 UK paediatric cancer centres between 2020 and 2024.

The new approach achieved remission rates of 92 per cent while long-term survival (82 per cent after three years) was comparable to children on more intensive traditional treatment plans.

No patients died during the early phase of treatment, which experts said represents a big leap forward in care.

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the most common childhood cancer, with around 400 new cases each year in the UK.

Although cure rates for newly diagnosed disease are high, the cancer coming back remains an issue.

Dr David O’Connor, consultant in paediatric haematology at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said of the study: “This approach marks a major step forward in developing kinder treatments for children with relapsed cancer.

“The early phase of treatment has traditionally carried significant risks.

“By using lower-intensity chemotherapy and moving rapidly to blinatumomab, we were able to eliminate treatment-related deaths without compromising effectiveness.”

According to Great Ormond Street, the clinical trial differs from others because it was delivered as routine NHS care, making the results more representative of real-world patients.