THE parents of a little girl fighting neuroblastoma for the third time have been given a ray of hope in their battle to save her life.

Rosie Veronica Mitchell, seven, went to a family education conference in London with her mum and dad which had been organised by the charity Solving Kids Cancer.

During the visit her mum Donna-Louise Hurrell took the chance to speak to experts about future treatment.

Donna-Louise, 40, said: "It certainly gave us more information on the potential treatment options and some hope.

"We are still of the view that antibody treatment is the way to go and will probably need to go abroad for this.

"But we now need to get Rosie up to date with scans and things so we can get a proper treatment plan together.

"We are hoping to get all this together before Christmas.

"Rosie is feeling well just now - she is receiving chemo and starts radiotherapy today.

"The main message we took away from London is there is hope for relapsed neuroblastoma.

"Unfortunately treatments are taking too long to come to the UK and are not available on the NHS."

Donna-Louise says from what she has been told that antibody treatment may be the best chance of success for Rosie.

This approach uses the body's own immune system to target cancer cells.

The immune system creates antibodies to attack foreign bodies in the body.

Once attached, they can recruit other parts of the immune system to destroy the cells containing the antigen.

These antibodies can be designed by researchers to target a specific antigen such as one found on cancer cells and they make copies in the lab.

This treatment is very expensive and it will cost more than £200,000.

The family's fundraising campaign - Rosie's Fighting Fund - has already raised more than £80,000, meaning the fund must be doubled.

Donna-Louise said: "Hopefully this is within reach if we keep up the fundraising.

"We are also just so continually overwhelmed, amazed and grateful of the support of the community and we cannot say thank-you enough - even the kids are getting involved via the local schools.

"We are also encouraged by some of the bigger companies getting involved now like Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of Scotland - we hope this continues and we get some more corporate donations coming in."

The community continues to rally round to back Rosie, with more events held at the weekend for the appeal.

Local woman Julie Jones took part in a skydive on Sunday and raised £1,360 while a bucket collection outside Cappielow saw fans pledge £1,234 for the campaign.

Supporter Susan Brown said: "We want to thank Lesley Ann Webb and Greenock Morton for allowing us to collect this great amount.

"We obviously brought Morton some luck as they won winning 5-1.

"Thanks for everyone who helped and everyone that donated."

Anyone who wants to support the campaign should visit www.solvingkidscancer.org.uk/rosie mitchell