New York vaccine trial becomes Teddy Sloman’s next line of defense after neuroblastoma remission
A three-year-old boy from Pontypool is preparing to travel to New York for an experimental vaccine trial after scans showed no active disease following treatment for high-risk neuroblastoma. For his family, the trip represents far more than a medical referral. It is a chance to reduce the risk that a rare and aggressive childhood cancer returns after months of surgery, chemotherapy, prolonged hospitalization, and uncertainty.
Teddy Sloman was diagnosed in July 2025 after symptoms that were initially mistaken for teething, infection, and constipation. He stopped eating and drinking, slept for long stretches, and began vomiting. His mother, Sarah, eventually felt a mass in his abdomen and first received reassurance that it was stool. When the child was brought back to The Grange Hospital in Cwmbran, a locum doctor on the children’s assessment unit recognized that the presentation was abnormal and ordered imaging. The scan revealed a significant tumour.
The disease burden was severe from the start. Teddy’s tumour filled his abdomen, compressed internal organs, and made it difficult for him to eat and even breathe. Cancer had already spread to his bone marrow. In neuroblastoma, especially the high-risk form, metastatic involvement and bulky primary disease signal a biologically aggressive tumor that can evade local control and return even after an apparently successful initial response. A child can look better on scans and still remain clinically vulnerable to microscopic disease.
One sentence captures the family’s current position: the cancer is not visible on recent scans, but relapse remains the danger that shapes every plan.
Sarah Sloman, a paediatric nurse, has described the diagnosis as surreal and deeply disorienting. Her own professional background gave her a framework for understanding the disease, but not a way to absorb it emotionally when it became her son’s illness. Teddy spent 10 months in Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital for Wales and also required specialist care in Birmingham and London. The prolonged course has left him dependent on tube feeding, and he is now relearning how to eat and drink. After long periods in bed, he has also had to learn how to walk again three times.
Those functional setbacks matter because they show how survivorship in high-risk childhood cancer often means more than tumor control. Nutritional dependence, muscle deconditioning, and delays in developmental milestones can persist long after the acute oncology phase ends. A toddler who has spent months attached to monitors and feeding equipment does not simply return to the life he had before the diagnosis. The treatment trajectory changes the child’s physical baseline and the family’s daily routine at the same time.
The next phase centers on disease prevention rather than rescue therapy. An experimental treatment intended to reduce the risk of recurrence is no longer available in the UK, prompting the family to raise £250,000 to access a vaccine trial in New York. The child has now been accepted as a patient for that study and is due for an initial appointment in November. To qualify, the family had to navigate a demanding referral process that included a urine sample, a bone marrow aspirate, and scans showing no active disease.
Sarah said the scan results felt like “Christmas came early.” The phrasing reflects the emotional weight of a clean scan in a disease known for relapse. In practice, a scan showing no active disease is not the end of the story in high-risk neuroblastoma; it is the entry point for maintenance strategies intended to consolidate remission. The logic of a vaccine trial in this setting is straightforward: if the immune system can be trained to recognize residual neuroblastoma cells before they re-establish growth, the window for recurrence may narrow.
The family’s experience has also been shaped by the loss of another maintenance option. In June, they learned that difluoromethylornithine, or DFMO, had been withdrawn from the NHS by the US-based company that owns it following a clinical trial. Children already receiving DFMO can continue for two years, but new patients cannot start it. For Teddy, that removed a treatment path that might otherwise have been available as a recurrence-prevention strategy.
The result is a familiar and costly pattern in paediatric oncology: when standard pathways close, families with the means or community backing often turn to private or overseas options. Friends launched a campaign that reached its original £250,000 target in 12 weeks, and the fundraising goal has since been increased to £350,000 to help cover ongoing costs. More than £300,000 has already been raised. The family said the support has been overwhelming, but the process itself has been exhausting.
Their situation also exposes how much childhood cancer care depends on geography, access, and funding. Sarah said families should not need to raise so much money to fly to the other side of the world for treatment. Her point is practical rather than rhetorical. When a trial is unavailable locally, the burden shifts to parents, relatives, and donors, even when the underlying disease is among the most dangerous in paediatric oncology.
Teddy’s younger brother Joey has also been part of the story. Because of a measles outbreak in New York, the family made the painful decision to leave him in the UK for the first trip. The separation illustrates how cancer care affects siblings as well as patients. Teddy and Joey have spent much of their lives together in hospital, and Sarah said she does not want to lose the ordinary milestones that siblings share: playing together, growing up side by side, and looking out for each other.
The Welsh government said cancer care remains a top priority and pointed to its 10-year strategy on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, along with support for early-stage clinical trials for children and young people through Health and Care Research Wales and Cancer Research UK. Aneurin Bevan health board said it recognizes how distressing serious childhood illness can be for parents, particularly when symptoms are complex and difficult to diagnose.
For Teddy’s family, the central clinical question is now narrower: can a maintenance vaccine keep a dangerous remission intact after a disease that once filled his abdomen and reached his bone marrow? The answer will not arrive quickly, and the road to New York has already shown how much weight can sit inside a single clean scan.