PITTSBURGH -- Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most common form of cancer in children. It is also the most curable.

Chemotherapy works about 80 percent of the time. Now, for the other 20 percent, there's a new treatment providing hope that was tested at Children's Hospital.

Alexa Zellers said, "It's been the longest, hardest struggle no one can ever prepare you for."

Zellers, 20, has been battling cancer most of her young life. She was just 8 years old when she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. By the time she was 19, she'd had three relapses and years of chemotherapy.

Zellers was told the only option left was a bone marrow transplant. But to have the operation her cancer had to be in remission, and traditional chemo drugs weren't working.

Her doctor at Children's Hospital suggested she try an experimental drug called clofarabine.

Zellers was given the drug five days in a row and the treatment was tough.

Zellers said, "I had a lot of side effects. My feet swelled. I couldn't walk for a couple of weeks."

But it was worth it.

"It was amazing. It put me right into remission, immediately," Zellers said.

Dr. Kim Ritchey, head of oncology at Children's Hospital, has high praise for the new drug.

Ritchey said, "It works, and it works in a population of patients that are very, very difficult to treat. Half of the children who had the good response were able to go on and get the curative treatment of a bone marrow transplant."

And that's what Zellers did. In November 2003, she had her bone marrow transplant and has been cancer free since.

Zellers said, "I'm very happy about it. I'm happy it worked for me."

Because of positive results like Zellers', clofarabine was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration after just three years of trials.

Clofarabine was the first chemotherapy drug approved for pediatric patients in the past 10 years.

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Hematology/Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation