Hudson Cowie, the Morinville infant with the ‘Boy in the Bubble’ disease, has received a miraculous transplant from perhaps the most unexpected source: himself.
“We got shipped down to Memphis honestly, almost immediately after we found out what type of SCID we were dealing with. Here at St. Jude, they were able to do a transplant using his own cells that they just modified. And so far, it's all looking really good,” explained Ian Cowie, Hudson’s father.
Hudson was born in late June and his newborn metabolic screening blood test came back positive for the markers of severe combined immunodeficiency, often shortened to SCID. He had zero immune system function at the time, Cowie said. Luckily, SCID was added to the screening at the end of May, allowing for it to be identified before the infant developed an infection that could have become life-threatening.
Soon after learning of this diagnosis, Ian and his wife Hayley rallied people to register as bone marrow donors in the hopes that one of them would turn out to be a positive match for Hudson. Through three bone marrow drives, 373 people signed up for the program in person with many more registering online through OneMatch.ca.
There are different types of SCID, however. Further genetic testing revealed that Hudson had X-linked SCID, which almost exclusively occurs in males.
The autologous transplant is a relatively new procedure being offered at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Once the X-linked SCID was identified, the Stollery Children’s Hospital put the Cowies in touch with the American transplant co-ordinators. Ian, Hayley and Mighty Hudson were flown down and put up in accommodations for the likely several-month stay.
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After a few days of chemotherapy conditioning to prepare Hudson for the transplant, Sept. 6 was “day zero,” Ian said, adding there are already signs the treatmnet will be successful.
“It actually was comically anticlimactic – getting his new immune system. We almost expected there to be bells and whistles and horns blowing, but they walked in with a bag of frozen cells. They thawed them in a lukewarm bath, drew them up in a syringe, and literally just pushed it in like a medication into an IV. That was it. Just like that. Boom. Brand new immune system.”
The three-month-old has already started to bounce back. He went through a brief period of nausea and poor appetite, plus he lost some of his hair. That all seems to have subsided and now he’s super active, super sociable, and super happy, Ian said. The boy is back to meeting all of his developmental milestones.
On Monday, the Cowies received the first official bit of good news: Hudson has had a huge spike in producing neutrophils, something that stops entirely due to the chemotherapy. Reaching this marker in his recovery means that the chemo has run its course and his immune system is resetting.
“To see that he's producing them again after the chemo is like if you unplug your WiFi box and plug it back in. It's starting to boot up. His neutrophil count is way higher than they were expecting. It's showing that he's on track to have a really quick recovery, fingers crossed.”
It will still be a few months before they learn whether Hudson is producing his own T cells, which will confirm the operation’s real success. The best case scenario, Ian said, is that they could be home by January or even December, however, it’s more realistic to see them return around March.
