Pediatric Oncology

Everyone, at every level, is checking, rechecking, thinking, researching, asking questions, discussing, analyzing, and trying to help patients.

The FDA has approved dasatinib (Sprycel) for the treatment of pediatric patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia in chronic phase.

Treatment with prolonged native E. coli asparaginase therapy for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia or non-Hodgkin lymphoma not only failed to improve survival versus the standard regimen, but also resulted in an increase in infections and allergy.

The combination of clofarabine, cyclophosphamide, and etoposide reached an overall response rate of 41% in a small study of children and adolescents with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia.

Guy Young, MD, director, Hemostasis and Thrombosis Program, attending physician, Hematology, Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplantation, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, USC, discusses using anticoagulants in children with cancer.

In the CALL-0603 study of 44 patients with first marrow-relapsed childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the second complete remission rate was 72.7% for a chemotherapy regimen that included a reduced dose of idarubicin.

Guy Young, MD, discussed the use of anticoagulants in managing thromboembolic events in pediatric cancer.

Tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) induced a complete remission with complete or incomplete hematologic recovery in 83% of pediatric, adolescent, and young adult patients with acute lymphoblastic lymphoma.

The effort to improve outcomes in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia should follow insight provided by next-generation sequencing and appropriate use of minimal residual disease criteria.

James L. Ferrara, MD, discusses the significance of the FDA approving tisagenlecleucel as the first CAR T-cell therapy.

A 15 mg/kg dose of rabbit anti-T-lymphocyte globulin was associated with similar graft-vs-host-disease, less nonrelapse mortality, and less disease recurrence compared with a 30 mg/kg dose for children with hematological malignancies.

Administering high-dose cytarabine to children with myeloid leukemia of Down syndrome during the second chemotherapy induction cycle resulted in improved event-free survival and overall survival compared to results observed in previous research studies.

The FDA issued a historic approval of the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, authorizing the use of tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for the treatment of patients up to 25 years of age with B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia that is refractory or in second or later relapse.

Arsenic trioxide consolidation was effective and safe in newly diagnosed pediatric patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia, allowing a significant reduction in cumulative anthracycline doses

In a small study of pediatric patients with relapsed/refractory ALK-positive anaplastic large cell lymphoma, treatment with 165 mg/m2 of crizotinib (Xalkori) was associated with an overall response rate of 83%