Filipe Wolff, 3, Needs Liver Transplant [VIDEO]

From Framingham to Boston to Brazil, family, friends and complete strangers created "Together for Filipe” - a campaign to help Filipe Wolff, age 3, living in Framingham, struggling with a rare cancer and a rare liver disease.

Born in September in 2008 in Brazil, Wolff, at 9 months old, started having problems interfering with his development.

In April 2010, Wolff (Juntos por Filipe Wolff), then 18 months old, was diagnosed with Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis, a multi-systemic disease that had already established itself in his liver and lungs. The presence of this first disease in his liver caused a secondary disease in his liver called Sclerosing Cholangitis.

After failed chemotherapy and other treatements in Brazil, Wolff's parents, Guilherme and Évelyn, researched and found a doctor in Massachusetts who was having success with a drug treatment.

Dr. Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, who works at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, was using Clofarabine, a drug not approved in Brazil, with some success.

"This is the main reason why we came to the United States," wrote the parents on the Help Filipe website.

The family met with Dr. Galindo in Nov. 2011. Dr. Galindo suspected the little boy's primary disease had gone into remission and that the urgent need was to care for his liver.

Dr. Galindo referred the family to Dr. Maureen Jonas, a liver specialist at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Dr. Jonas  performed a biopsy that month, which determined the primary disease was going into remission and that his liver was highly compromised because of the secondary disease.

In January, Dr. Galindo told the family the "primary disease was going into remission" and "conditions were favorable for having the transplant. So the chemotherapy treatment that we came here for was no longer necessary. However, the money we raised to come here is not sufficient to pay for the transplant, it will just barely cover the cost of the biopsy and hospitalization for an infection that occurred in December," wrote the family.

It is estimated the family will need $833,000 for the liver transplant, and related medical expenses.

Thus far, more than $127,000 has been raised.

A team of volunteers, calling themselves "Together for Filipe" have banded together, these past few weeks, to plan a gala event Saturday, March 3 at the new Verve at the Crown Plaza Natick, on Route 9, but it was recently postponed.

T-shirts, with the preschooler's image on it, are being sold for $20. Designed for the campaign by graphic artists Gilberto Ricci and Anderson Carvalho, with production donated by Art Shirt Company, the shirts are sold online and in Somervile and Everett.

The family wrote on its website, "In Brazil this type of liver transplant is not performed when the primary disease is not totally cured. We have great confidence in the team of doctors that has seen Filipe at Children’s Hospital and at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. We also realize that we are in the best medical center in the world. This is why we feel the need to have the transplant done here. ... Although we have major medical centers in Brazil and amazing doctors with a lot of experience, they have not performed a liver transplant on a patient with the same problems that Filipe has. In addition, they are just starting to do live donor liver transplants yet here in the US they already have several years of experience with this type of procedure."

Tax-deductible donations are being accepted, via Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers (MAPS) in Framingham, the Immaculate Conception Church in Everett and the Lancaster Portuguese SDA Church in Lancaster.

Besides Filipe, Guilherme and Évelyn have a son Henrique.