Antibody therapies for lymphoma in children.

Background: Lymphomas are the third most common malignancy in childhood. Cure rates are high but have reached a plateau. Therefore new treatment modalities should be developed.

The role of programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) and its ligands in pediatric cancer.

Programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) and its ligands, PD-L1 and PD-L2 maintain self-tolerance and modulate physiological immune responses. Recently, targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway with blocking antibodies has emerged as a potentially promising approach to treat advanced cancers in adult patients. Since tumor PD-L1 expression is currently considered the most important predictive biomarker for successful checkpoint blockade, we summarize expression data for the most common tumors of childhood.

Antibody therapy of pediatric B-cell lymphoma.

B-cell lymphoma in children accounts for about 10% of all pediatric malignancies. Chemotherapy has been very successful leading to an over-all 5-year survival between 80 and 90% depending on lymphoma type and extent of disease. Therapeutic toxicity remains high calling for better targeted and thus less toxic therapies.