Dad tells how 2 kids are fighting WE NEED TO RAISE £500,000 TO SAVE OUR SON ...and we’re praying his sister

“We are sure that if we can just get the cash together that treatment will save him.”

Labourer Dave and beautician Marie-anne Cornelius, 45, from Hastings,

East Sussex, gave up work to care for their son four years ago. So far their celebritybacked campaign Denny’s Last Chance has raised £200,000.

Denny receives small doses of chemo to keep him alive but in as little as four weeks his body could become immune to treatment.

Dave said: “On Monday we had the heart-wrenching news that the leukaemia was too strong to survive the chemo they had planned. We are hoping to spin out his treatment long enough to raise the money.”

Denny was diagnosed aged three almost exactly four years ago after suffering unexplained bruises and pain in the bones of his legs and ankle.

The blood cancer he has affects just 790 people a year, mostly children, in the UK.

After multiple rounds of chemotherapy he was put in remission in October 2017 but the family’s happiness was short-lived.

Early in 2018, toddler Marley was sent home from nursery after staff noticed her limping.

By another cruel coincidence, she was diagnosed with the same cancer as her brother two years to the day after he was.

They are understood to be the only siblings in the world with the non-genetic disease. The very same day, the devastated parents received a call with bad news about Denny.

Routine tests confirmed he had relapsed. Three weeks later the children underwent chemo side by side at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

The lad’s illness was so aggressive it required a bone marrow transplant last summer – which he was given just a 40 per cent chance of surviving.

Dave said: “We nearly lost him several times but in true Denny style he pulled through.

“Day by day he slowly regained his strength and finally he then got to ring the bell to celebrate the end of treatment.

“It was an incredible, emotional day. We went to Butlin’s to celebrate and I’ve never seen a child so happy. It was a dream come true.” In September Denny started school for the first time after years of tutoring in hospitals. But two weeks later the family received yet another blow when a blood test confirmed the cancer had returned more aggressively than ever.

“The consultant advised us to take him home for palliative care as there is nothing they can do,” Dave said.

“I told them I would never give up on my son, there have to be other options. It turns out there is – only it comes with a massive price tag.”

Denny has been accepted for treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia which offers a T-cell therapy not available in the UK.

The treatment has a 30 per cent success rate. It involves taking a patient’s T-cells – part of the body’s immune response – and changing them in a lab so they will attack cancerous ones when reinserted.

Dave, also dad to Rosie, 13, Buddy, ten and one-year-old Teddy, explained: “The 500k is just for treatment. We will also have to find a nurse willing to travel with Denny and a pilot to take him, plus our accommodation.”

The family’s fundraising campaign is backed by local businesses, nurses,