A 13-year-old Belgian boy has become the first in the world to be cured of a deadly brain cancer.

Aged six, Lucas Jemeljanova was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a very rare and highly aggressive brain tumor which kills 98 percent of sufferers within five years.

He was randomly assigned to receive everolimus, a type of chemotherapy drug, in a clinical trial, which is used to treat kidney, pancreas, breast and brain cancer but has not been used successfully to treat DIPG.

Lucas responded well to the treatment and the tumor gradually vanished.

Seven years later, Lucas now has no trace of cancer, and has officially been in remission for five years.

Lucas 'beat all the odds' said his doctor Jacques Grill, and his case 'offers real hope.'

His parents, Cedric and Olesja, took him to France to be one of the first enrolled on the BIOMEDE trial, which was testing potential new drugs for DIPG.

Everolimus works by blocking mTOR, a protein which helps cancer cells divide and grow and produce new blood vessels. 

This stops or slows down the growth of the cancer by preventing the cancer cells from reproducing and by decreasing blood supply to the tumor cells.

The drug is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a prescription drug to treat a range of cancers.