Novel treatments and technologies applied to the cure of neuroblastoma

Abstract

Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common extracranial solid tumour in childhood, ac-counting for approximately 15% of all cancer-related deaths in the paediatric population1. It is characterised by heterogeneous clinical behaviour in neonates and often adverse outcomes in tod-dlers. The overall survival of children with high-risk disease is around 40–50% despite the aggressive treatment protocols consisting of intensive chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy and hematopoi-etic stem cell transplantation2,3. There is an ongoing research effort to increase NB’s cellular and molecular biology knowledge to translate essential findings into novel treatment strategies. This review aims to address new therapeutic modalities emerging from preclinical studies offering a unique translational opportunity for NB treatment.