A six year-old leukaemia sufferer who became one of the first in the world to trial a new gene-therapy treatment is smiling again - after tests revealed her cancer has vanished.

Erin Cross, of Chester, in Cheshire, was gravely-ill earlier this year with deadly acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a cancer of the white blood cells.

But after £100,000 was raised in a public appeal on ITV's This Morning show with Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, in July she jetted to Seattle with her doting parents Sarah and Antony Cross.

Experimental, pioneering new AR (Chimaeric Antigen Receptor) T-Cell therapy re-engineers the cells in the lab to attack and kill cancer cells when injected back into the patient's body.

Now her family have been told by Seattle Children's Hospital that blood tests reveal the cancer has completely disappeared.