Neuroblastoma
|
Neuroblastoma is a pediatric cancer of the sympathetic nervous system.
It is the most frequent extra-cranial solid childhood tumor, affecting 10-20 children per year in Belgium. These tumors mostly occur in the adrenal glands in the abdomen and the nervous tissue in the neck, chest, abdomen and pelvis. The currently employed intensive multi-modal therapies still achieve disappointingly low perspective for cure, with less than 50% survival rates. In addition, patients that do survive suffer from serious long-term side-effects, including secondary cancer later in life. As such, there is an urgent medical need for more effective and less toxic therapeutic strategies for high-risk neuroblastoma patients, with the integration of precision oncology biomarkers for patient stratification and therapy prediction and monitoring. |