Crystal Duffey

We would like to thank everyone for the incredible kindness shown towards Leon and our family. We have read all your comments and messages and the love and support we have felt has brought us so much hope and love! We have been blown away by over £30,000 raised. The kindness of strangers and the power of people coming together have given us a chance to pursue further treatment for the husband and daddy who means everything to us. Your donations are already making a difference. They have enabled us to pay £5,350 for extensive tumour profiling, examining the genetic and characteristics of Leon’s cancer to tailor a treatment plan specific to his cancer. So far, this has identified three treatment routes and clinical trials, based specifically on his tumour’s biology. Unfortunately, these treatments are not available to Leon through the NHS and accessing them requires us to privately fund or travel abroad for a clinical trial. One finding was high HER3 gene expression, not commonly seen in kidney cancer. We are now paying for an additional test to confirm the amount of HER3 protein on his cancer cells. This is a treatment designed to deliver chemotherapy directly to cancer cells carrying that target. The trials we are pursuing for this are only available in America. Our main fundraising goal remains the T-cell therapy trial in America. The testing has confirmed Leon is an ideal candidate due to an exceptionally high level of T-cells. This treatment aims to reprogram the T-Cells to recognise and attack the cancer. We have contacted the American team about Leon’s eligibility and they have advised that we need proof of funding of $200,000 before he can be accepted. We are currently around £85,000 short of that amount. Leon’s current NHS treatment is palliative and aims to try slow its spread. His recent CT scan showed some areas of control, but devastatingly growth too. We need to have his next treatment route ready. Leon is fighting for his life against a rare and very aggressive form of cancer and this can spread quickly. It is incredibly hard knowing that access to treatment depends on raising this amount of money. But we will keep doing everything we can to give Leon more time to be my husband, to be our children’s daddy and to give him a fair chance to fight this. If you can donate or share Leon’s story, you would be helping us take the next step towards accessing treatment Leon so desperately needs. Thank you for standing with Leon and our family. Your support is giving us the means to keep moving forward and we cannot thank you all enough!