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Review Article
Immunotherapy in Pediatric Solid Tumors
Clin Pediatr Hematol Oncol 2020;27:22-31.
Published online April 30, 2020
© 2020 Korean Society of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology

Jung Yoon Choi

Department of Pediatrics, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul National University Cancer Research Institute, Seoul, Korea
Correspondence to: Jung Yoon Choi
Department of Pediatrics, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul National University Cancer Research Institute, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, Korea
Tel: +82-2-2072-0211
Fax: +82-2-743-3455
E-mail: brille82@snu.ac.kr
ORCID ID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8758-3074
Received April 4, 2020; Revised April 17, 2020; Accepted April 21, 2020.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
The survival rates for pediatric patients with solid tumors have improved dramatically in recent decades. However, patients with metastatic disease at diagnosis or progressive solid tumors still have a poor prognosis. Recently, immunotherapy has emerged as a novel therapeutic strategy in the pediatric population. Although not widely used in Korea, the anti-GD2 treatment in neuroblastoma is one of the successes of immunotherapy. In addition, many early phase clinical trials for monoclonal and bispecific antibodies, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy and cancer vaccines are ongoing. According to results reported so far, a majority of pediatric solid tumors showed limited response to ICIs, except Hodgkin lymphoma and hypermutant pediatric tumors. These results indicate that children and adolescents need to be applied different immunotherapeutic approaches from adults. The aim of this review is to understand the immunological environment and immunotherapeutic challenges in pediatric solid tumors.
Keywords: Immunotherapy, Pediatric, Solid tumor, Immune checkpoint inhibitor, Chimeric antigen receptor T cell
Figures
Fig. 1. Schematic diagrams of the mechanisms of action of CTLA-4, PD-1 and PD-L1 blockade with or without chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy [36,58]. (A) T-cell activation, attenuation by normal inhibitory signals, and negative regulation using anti-CTLA-4, anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1 antibody therapy. (B) CAR-mediated activation, attenuation by tumor and checkpoint mediated inhibitory signals. Checkpoint receptor binding and checkpoint ligand blocking antibodies may synergize with chimeric antigen receptor therapy. APC, antigen presenting cell; CTLA-4, cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen-4; PD-1, programmed cell death receptor; PD-L1, programmed death-ligand 1; TAA, tumor-associated antigen; TCR, T-cell receptor.
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April 2020, 27 (1)
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