Emerging role of immunotherapy for childhood cancers

Recent developments in cell and gene therapy have a great impact on the new therapeutic approaches in pediatric cancers. Monoclonal antibodies for neuroblastoma and bispecific antibodies for leukemia have induced significant clinical responses for otherwise chemorefractory patients. Moreover, cellular therapeutic approaches including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells as well as natural killer (NK) cells have the potential to cure patients with so far incurable malignancies and are the basis for future new therapies for pediatric cancer. Newer generations of cellular therapies, further development and improvement of such new strategies and their earlier use in therapeutic strategies will hopefully allow to significantly reduce the chemotherapeutic burden for children with cancer while increasing the cure rate.