Immunotherapy Boosts Pediatric Cancer Survival

Boosts Pediatric Cancer Survival

Administering a new form of immunotherapy to children with neuroblastoma, a nervous system cancer, increased the percentage of those who were alive and free of disease progression after two years.

The percentage rose from 46 percent for children receiving a standard therapy to 66 percent for children receiving immunotherapy plus standard therapy, according to the study in the Sept. 30, 2010, New England Journal of Medicine.




Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the peripheral nervous system (found outside of the brain and spinal cord), and is responsible for 12 percent of all deaths due to cancer in children under 15 years of age.

It is the most common non-brain solid tumor in children. Nearly 50 percent of patients with neuroblastoma have a high-risk form of the disease and have poor long-term survival despite very intensive treatment.

The previously established standard treatment for neuroblastoma uses high doses of chemotherapy to destroy as many cancer cells as possible. But this form of chemotherapy (myleoablative therapy) also destroys some normal blood-forming cells, so it is followed by giving back previously collected blood-forming cells to restore immune system function and blood cell formation

The phase III trial results establish ch14.18 immunotherapy as a new standard treatment for children with high-risk neuroblastoma,” said Alice Yu, M.D., Ph.D., University of California, San Diego and study chair of the clinical trial.


Because there was no pharmaceutical company to make ch14.18 when the phase III trial started, NCI manufactured the agent and provided it to COG for the clinical trial. NCI continues to manufacture ch14.18 and to make it available to children with high-risk neuroblastoma through ongoing Children’s Oncology Group clinical trials.