About this Research Topic
Neuroblastoma (NB), a cancer arising in the adrenal gland or less often from the extra-adrenal sympathetic chain, including in the retroperitoneum, chest, and neck, represents the most common solid tumour found in children. Its prognosis depends on the risk classification, indeed the -very low, -low, -intermediate will meet a very different destiny as compared to -high-risk NBs in terms of survival rate. High-risk patients and recurrent NB require more aggressive treatment, which often includes chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, stem cell transplant, immunotherapy, and retinoid therapy in three different phases of induction, consolidation and maintenance. Besides chemotherapy, radiotherapy and stem cell transplant it is widely used treatment with retinoid drug 13-cis-retinoic acid, immune-activating cytokines, mostly used to reduce recurrence risk. Actually, the only targeted drugs employed are ALK inhibitors and anti-Aurora A kinase pathway drugs, and the only approved monoclonal antibody is the one that targets GD2.
Considering this context of limited efficacy demonstrated by traditional cancer treatments, there is an urgent need to employ innovative targeted therapies for high-risk neuroblastoma. ADCs capitalize on the specificity of a tumor-targeting antibody to selectively deliver toxic payloads to cancer cells, and potentially offer distinct advantages over other types of immune-based therapies. On the other side, the patient’s own lymphocytes are modified ex-vivo using gene transfer techniques and programmed to recognize and destroy specific tumour cells regardless of MHC receptor, which probably makes CAR-T the most personalized therapy. It has shown remarkable success in treating haematological malignancies, such as acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL); and its effectiveness in treating solid tumours is still being investigated.
Immunotherapeutic approaches utilizing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADC); in particular GD2-, ALK-, LGALS3BP-, and GPC2-targeting ADCs, beyond anti-GD2 and anti-CD171/L1-CAM CAR-T therapy, were recently already proven to be effective in neuroblastoma preclinical and clinical setting.
This Research Topic aims to explore any new advances in therapeutic approaches involving ADCs and CAR-T cell therapy or refinement and optimization of pre-existing immune-therapeutic strategies in the field of neuroblastoma therapy. We invite researchers to contribute Original Research Articles, Reviews, Brief Research Reports, Case Reports, Clinical Trials, and Perspectives that address novel ADC- and CAR-T-based anti-tumoral therapeutic strategies in neuroblastoma.
Please note: Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics, computational analysis, or predictions of public databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent clinical or patient cohort, or biological validation in vitro or in vivo, which are not based on public databases) are not suitable for publication in this journal.
Considering this context of limited efficacy demonstrated by traditional cancer treatments, there is an urgent need to employ innovative targeted therapies for high-risk neuroblastoma. ADCs capitalize on the specificity of a tumor-targeting antibody to selectively deliver toxic payloads to cancer cells, and potentially offer distinct advantages over other types of immune-based therapies. On the other side, the patient’s own lymphocytes are modified ex-vivo using gene transfer techniques and programmed to recognize and destroy specific tumour cells regardless of MHC receptor, which probably makes CAR-T the most personalized therapy. It has shown remarkable success in treating haematological malignancies, such as acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL); and its effectiveness in treating solid tumours is still being investigated.
Immunotherapeutic approaches utilizing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADC); in particular GD2-, ALK-, LGALS3BP-, and GPC2-targeting ADCs, beyond anti-GD2 and anti-CD171/L1-CAM CAR-T therapy, were recently already proven to be effective in neuroblastoma preclinical and clinical setting.
This Research Topic aims to explore any new advances in therapeutic approaches involving ADCs and CAR-T cell therapy or refinement and optimization of pre-existing immune-therapeutic strategies in the field of neuroblastoma therapy. We invite researchers to contribute Original Research Articles, Reviews, Brief Research Reports, Case Reports, Clinical Trials, and Perspectives that address novel ADC- and CAR-T-based anti-tumoral therapeutic strategies in neuroblastoma.
Please note: Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics, computational analysis, or predictions of public databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent clinical or patient cohort, or biological validation in vitro or in vivo, which are not based on public databases) are not suitable for publication in this journal.
Keywords: neuroblastoma, Therapy, Cell-Based, ADC, CAR-T
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