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Research

Invasive fungal disease (IFD) remains a challenging complication of treatment for paediatric acute leukaemia. Consensus fungal treatment guidelines recommend withholding chemotherapy to facilitate immune recovery in this setting, yet prolonged delays in leukaemia therapy increase risk of relapse.

Research

Antibodies that target immune checkpoints such as cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA‐4) and the programmed cell death protein 1/ligand 1 (PD-1/PD-L1) are now a treatment option for multiple cancer types. However, as a monotherapy, objective responses only occur in a minority of patients. Chemotherapy is widely used in combination with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). Although a variety of isolated immunostimulatory effects have been reported for several classes of chemotherapeutics, it is unclear which chemotherapeutics provide the most benefit when combined with ICB.

Research

Increasing evidence suggests that breastfeeding may protect from childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia. However, most studies have limited their analyses to any breastfeeding, and only a few data have examined exclusive breastfeeding, or other exposures such as formula milk.

Research

Pineoblastoma is a rare brain tumor usually diagnosed in children. Given its rarity, no pineoblastoma-specific trials have been conducted. Studies have included pineoblastoma accruing for other embryonal tumors over the past 30 years.

Research

With immune checkpoint therapy (ICT) having reshaped the treatment of many cancers, the next frontier is to identify and develop novel combination therapies to improve efficacy. Previously, we and others identified beneficial immunological effects of the vitamin A derivative tretinoin on anti-tumour immunity.

Research

Medulloblastoma is the most common childhood brain cancer. Mainstay treatments of radiation and chemotherapy have not changed in decades and new treatment approaches are crucial for the improvement of clinical outcomes. To date, immunotherapies for medulloblastoma have been unsuccessful, and studies investigating the immune microenvironment of the disease and the impact of current therapies are limited.

Research

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in infants younger than 1 year of age is an aggressive, high-risk subtype of childhood ALL. Infant ALL with KMT2A-r is characteristically poorly responsive to chemotherapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. New strategies, such as molecularly targeted therapies and immunotherapies, are in development and show promise in preclinical models and early phase studies.

Research

There is a strong unmet need to improve systemic therapy in mesothelioma. Chemotherapy with cisplatin and pemetrexed improves survival in malignant pleural mesothelioma, and immune checkpoint inhibitors are an emerging treatment in this disease. We aimed to evaluate the activity of durvalumab, an anti-PD-L1 antibody, given during and after first-line chemotherapy with cisplatin and pemetrexed in patients with advanced malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Research

Acute erythroleukemia (AEL or acute myeloid leukemia [AML]-M6) is a rare but aggressive hematologic malignancy. Previous studies showed that AEL leukemic cells often carry complex karyotypes and mutations in known AML-associated oncogenes.

Research

Transcription factors known to induce the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) (such as ZEB1/2 [zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1/2], SNAI1/2/3, and TWIST1/2) have been undoubtedly implicated in tumorigenesis, cancer progression, metastasis, and chemoresistance in solid tumors; however, their role in normal and malignant hematopoiesis has been underappreciated for many years.