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A future once out of reach: How CAR-T cell therapy gave Gideon his tomorrow

By Erin Campbell
Senior Manager, Communications

When Sosy Robinson looks at her 15-year-old son Gideon, she shares one of her deepest thoughts that only a parent who has faced the unthinkable can express: “For the first time since Gideon was 5 years old, we’re actually dreaming about his future.”

Her voice carried the weight of a decade of fear and uncertainty but also relief and gratitude for a future that once felt impossible. Today, Gideon is a high school freshman who loves computer repair, Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and helping at his local food pantry. But for much of his childhood, Sosy couldn’t let herself imagine moments like these.

Gideon was diagnosed 10 years ago with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a fast-growing disease that starts in the bone marrow, affects white blood cells and disrupts the body’s ability to make healthy blood cells. It’s the most common childhood cancer.

Gideon, now 15 years old, now dreams of pursuing a career in IT.

After years of standard treatment, Gideon went into remission in 2019, but the relief was short-lived. His cancer returned later that year and his family braced for the worst. Then doctors proposed a new option: chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy, or (CAR-T) cell therapy for short. The treatment alters a patient’s own immune cells to recognize and destroy cancer. For Sosy, that moment felt almost miraculous and provided a glimmer of real hope after years of uncertainty.

“As soon as [the doctor] said that it was just like fireworks and happiness and lightning and sunshine and rainbows,” Sosy said.

The bright future that once felt impossible

Gideon received CAR-T cell therapy in 2020. Today, his doctors consider him cured. He now repairs laptops with his dad and in his IT class, always eager to figure out how things work and how to make them better.

“I love helping people and showing them how to fix things or setting up tech. It feels good to make something work again,” said Gideon, who hopes to apply his skills in the U.S. Air Force before pursuing a career in IT.

Sosy celebrates that life is, at last, gloriously ordinary and that simple moments now feel extraordinary. “Seeing him go to school, make friends and talk about homecoming — those are the moments I never thought we’d get to see,” she said.

Gideon in early 2019 just before his relapse

“Now we just live life. Watching him grow and be a normal teenager is the greatest gift.”

Sosy Robinson

When asked how he stays positive, Gideon doesn’t hesitate. He recalls a line from one of his favorite movies, Kung-Fu Panda, about how “yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery, but today a gift.” It’s a reminder he tries to live by every day.

“If something bad happens, make the best of it,” he added. “Stay strong. When you’re strong, you get to see the future you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.”

That strength, Sosy said, carried their family through long hospital stays, countless procedures and the constant fear that even a small fever could mean something worse. Through setbacks, sleepless nights and moments of profound fear, they held tightly to hope and focused on doing whatever it took to help Gideon.

“We trusted science, we trusted the doctors and we trusted that we were in the right hands,” Sosy said.

The science behind the second chance

CAR-T cell therapy gave Gideon’s doctors a new way to fight his leukemia – a cutting-edge approach first approved for pediatric patients in 2017. Since the therapy first became available, it has been used to treat tens of thousands of patients worldwide, including children, teens and adults, many of whom had no other treatment options.

For Nicole Brockway, president of Biosciences at Thermo Fisher Scientific, stories like Gideon’s show how progress in science and the right tools to support it can change lives: “It’s one of the most promising breakthroughs in personalized medicine. For many people, CAR-T cell therapy has brought hope and healing. It’s changing what’s possible in the fight against cancer.”

Gideon pictured with his sister Catalina playing video games.

To administer CAR-T cell therapy, doctors begin by collecting a type of white blood cell, called a T cell, from the patient’s bloodstream. In a specialized lab, those cells are genetically re-engineered to recognize a protein marker found on cancer cells. Once modified, millions of the cells are grown and infused back into the patient. From there, they travel through the body, seek out the cancer cells and destroy them.

While doctors are the ones to administer CAR-T therapy to their patients, Thermo Fisher plays an important role in the background. The company equips scientists, clinicians and biopharma companies with the tools, services and expertise needed to help move therapies like the one used to treat Gideon from early discovery to real-world impact. After white blood cells are collected, Thermo Fisher’s Invitrogen™ Dynabeads™ magnetic beads are used to isolate and activate the T cells. From there, researchers rely on media, reagents, gene-delivery tools, automation systems and analytical technologies – like those provided by Thermo Fisher – to grow the cells and ensure every dose is consistent, safe and ready for infusion.

“We help our customers overcome challenges with advanced tools and automated systems that improve consistency, reduce risk and cost, and help bring therapies to patients faster,” Nicole said.

The power of innovation and what’s ahead

Nicole believes the next decade will redefine how cancer and immune-related diseases are treated. Automation and artificial intelligence are transforming how therapies are developed, making them faster to produce, more affordable and more accessible to patients around the world.

“We’ll see shorter manufacturing times, so patients can get treatment sooner, smarter engineering that helps T cells target cancer cells more accurately, and the expansion of CAR-T cell therapy beyond oncology into autoimmune diseases,” Nicole said.

She’s also energized by advancements in allogeneic CAR-T therapies. Often called “off-the-shelf” treatments, these are therapies made from healthy donor or stem cells, rather than from a patient’s own T cells. Using donor cells is also less taxing on patients, who may be weakened by illness or prior treatments. This shift could make lifesaving treatments available to many more patients. Combined with innovations in proteomics, which reveal how diseases behave at the molecular level in real-time, these advances are helping scientists design treatments that target even the most complex conditions.

“These treatments are becoming a cornerstone of modern medicine,” Nicole said. “And Thermo Fisher is enabling our customers to deliver these solutions to patients.”

Gideon gives the thumbs up during a hospital visit while surrounded by his family.

A mission in action

Six years after his CAR-T infusion, Gideon is living proof of the impact science can have on a life. “Without CAR-T, I probably wouldn’t be here,” he said. “Science and the people who make it possible saved my life.”

Sosy called it a miracle of both science and hope: “The future used to feel uncertain. Now it feels bright and full of promise.”

For Nicole, that’s the heart of Thermo Fisher’s Mission: to enable its customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. “Every day here [at Thermo Fisher] means more hope for someone out there,” Nicole said. “It means a child like Gideon gets another tomorrow. That’s why we do this. That’s who we are.”

When asked about his own tomorrow, Gideon smiled and said, “I’m excited for the future.”

And now, his mom allows herself to dream alongside him.