Talia Castellano, Neuroblastoma

7 Years Old at Diagnosis

Talia CastellanoTalia was diagnosed with neuroblastoma on Valentine’s Day, 2007. She was 7 years old.

Talia’s cancer started in her left adrenal gland and metastasized to her chest. She went through 5 rounds of chemotherapy, surgery, another round of chemotherapy, radiation, accutane and antibody treatments. Talia was cancer free for 1 year. In September 2008, she relapsed with a small lymph node near her heart. Treatments started again, this time with surgery first, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. Again, Talia was cancer free for almost two years. Her cancer returned in August 2010. This time it was a lymph node behind her pancreas. This time Talia had chemotherapy, surgery and more chemotherapy. Again, Talia was cancer free.

Unfortunately, in April 2011, Talia’s cancer returned for the 4th time. Talia now has two lymph nodes near her trachea and one near her clavicle. She keeps getting cancer in soft tissue and it keeps coming back. She has been on two different clinical trial studies since April 2011 and is doing well. The tumors were shrinking on the first study, but it was stopped because her platelet counts didn’t recover in time to start the next chemotherapy. She is now on another clinical trial and we are waiting to find out if the tumors are responding.

Talia has been through a lot, but she has also had some great experiences throughout this journey. She has been in many celebrity fashion shows to help raise money for cancer research. She has celebrities including Joey Fatone, Justin Beiber and Bo Outlaw. Talia is the spokes-model for the Central Florida Blood Center and helps raise awareness about how important it is for people to give blood to help cancer patients like her.

We will keep fighting. I tell Talia she is a Leo – her birthday is in August – she is a fighter!

UPDATE 8/9/2012

Rachel Elbaum
TODAY.com
8/9/2012

Talia has captivated the Internet with her makeup tutorials over the past year, recently announced that her cancer has spread to her bone marrow.


Talia Castellano started her YouTube video channel, “Make-up is my wig,” about a year ago and quickly gained a following of more than 100,000 people. She appears in her videos bald, and goes through how to apply different styles of eye shadow and shows off finds from shopping expeditions…Read more

UPDATE 7/16/2013

CureSearch expresses our deepest condolences to Talia’s family on her passing. She was an inspiration to all.

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