Woman cancer-free after UK's first liver transplant for advanced bowel

A 32-year-old woman is cancer-free after undergoing the UK’s first liver transplant for advanced bowel cancer.

Bianca Perea, a trainee lawyer from Manchester, was diagnosed with the most advanced kind of bowel cancer in November 2021, with doctors telling her they aimed to prolong her life rather than find a cure.

But, alongside other treatments including targeted drug therapy, chemotherapy and surgery, the transplant has been a huge success and Ms Perea now has no signs of cancer anywhere in her body.

Ms Perea first visited her GP in Wigan after feeling constipated and bloated. After tests, a colonoscopy and a biopsy, she was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer, which had spread to all eight segments of her liver.

Ms Perea accepted the diagnosis, but said she refused to believe the outlook was so bleak.

“I don’t want to sound kind of ignorant or arrogant or anything like that but I just didn’t feel in my gut that that was going to be it,” she said.

Her mother asked about a possible transplant at that stage but was told it was not a feasible treatment.

Ms Perea had 37 rounds of a targeted drug called panitumumab plus chemotherapy for two and a half years.

She had an excellent response to the treatment, which meant she was able to have an operation in May 2023 to remove the bowel tumour.

But scans showed she still had tumours in her liver, which could not be operated on.

Nevertheless, because her response to chemotherapy had been so good and her bowel cancer was seemingly gone, doctors began to look at liver transplants.

Ms Perea was added to the transplant list in February 2024 and was lucky enough to find a donor last summer.