Patrick Hundsdörfer

There is still no sufficient therapy known for children with refractory or relapsed neuroblastoma, as in this situation neuroblastoma usually are chemotherapy-resistant. The development of novel therapeutic approaches for refractory neuroblastom is one of the main goals in pediatric oncology. We here examined two completely different novel approaches for treatment of chemo-resistant neuroblastoma. The combination of two pathway inhibitorst which effects are thought to be synergistic (p53 re-activation and inhibition of surviyin), resulted in strong cytotoxic effects and inhibtion of tumor growth in vitro and in vivo (in patient-derived xenografts). Immunotherapy using a novel antibody linking neuroblastoma cells and cytotoxic immune cells (T cells) directly to each other, caused strong antineoplastic effects in vitro and in vivo (in a syngeneic murine neuroblastoma modell).

Both promising approaches should now be tested in clinical phase I/II studies.