Alice Yu

A multicenter research team has announced encouraging results for an experimental therapy using elements of the body's immune system to improve cure rates for children with neuroblastoma, a challenging cancer of the nervous system.

A phase III study has shown that adding an antibody-based therapy that harnesses the body's immune system resulted in a 20 percent increase in the number of children living disease-free for at least two years with neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma, a hard-to-treat cancer arising from nervous system cells, is responsible for 15 percent of cancer-related deaths in children.