Publications by authors named "Zwaan C"

Background: The effect of age on doxorubicin pharmacokinetics remains inconclusive, especially in patients at the extremes of the age spectrum. We developed a population pharmacokinetic model to further investigate the impact of age on the pharmacokinetics of doxorubicin.

Methods: A three-compartment model, incorporating allometric scaling was developed to describe doxorubicin pharmacokinetics across all ages.

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Background: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogenous and complex blood cancer requiring aggressive treatment. Early identification and prediction of the complications following treatment is vital for effective disease management.

Aims: We explored associations between plasma protein levels and fever- and infection-related complications in 26 AML patients during chemotherapy-induced neutropenia.

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Article Synopsis
  • Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a serious blood cancer with a complex genetic background, particularly affecting children through specific gene rearrangements associated with poor treatment outcomes.
  • * In AML, translocations involving the NUP98 gene create fusion proteins that disrupt normal cell functions, leading to abnormal cell growth and structure.
  • * This review explores the roles of NUP98 fusion proteins in AML and discusses potential new treatment strategies targeting these specific genetic alterations.
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Because of the low mutational burden and consequently, fewer potential neoantigens, children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) are thought to have a T cell-depleted or 'cold' tumor microenvironment and may have a low likelihood of response to T cell-directed immunotherapies. Understanding the composition, phenotype, and spatial organization of T cells and other microenvironmental populations in the pediatric AML bone marrow (BM) is essential for informing future immunotherapeutic trials about targetable immune-evasion mechanisms specific to pediatric AML. Here, we conducted a multidimensional analysis of the tumor immune microenvironment in pediatric AML and non-leukemic controls.

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Article Synopsis
  • Aberrant expression of HOX and MEIS1 family genes in certain leukemias disrupts normal blood cell differentiation and contributes to leukemia development.
  • Menin inhibitors can target the interaction between KMT2A and menin, reducing the abnormal expression of key factors and promoting differentiation in these leukemias.
  • A collaborative effort among pediatric and adult specialists aims to advance menin inhibitors in treatment, offering a comprehensive overview of clinical trials and advocating for inclusive trial designs for youth.
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Patients with relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or lymphoblastic lymphoma (LL) have poor outcomes compared with newly diagnosed, treatment-naïve patients. The phase 2, open-label DELPHINUS study evaluated daratumumab (16 mg/kg IV) plus backbone chemotherapy in children with relapsed/refractory B-cell ALL (n = 7) after ≥2 relapses, and children and young adults with T-cell ALL (children, n = 24; young adults, n = 5) or LL (n = 10) after first relapse. The primary end point was complete response (CR) in the B-cell ALL (end of cycle 2) and T-cell ALL (end of cycle 1) cohorts, after which patients could proceed off study to allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT).

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Background: Preterm infants, especially those born small for gestational age (SGA), are at risk of short-term and long-term health complications. Characterization of changes in circulating proteins postnatally in preterm infants may provide valuable fundamental insights into this population. Here, we investigated postnatal developmental patterns in preterm infants and explored protein signatures that deviate between SGA infants and appropriate for gestational age (AGA) infants using a mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics workflow.

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Relapsed/refractory T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)/lymphoma (LBL) represent a significant unmet medical need. WU-CART-007 is a CD7-targeting, allogeneic, fratricide-resistant chimeric antigen receptor T cell product generated from healthy donor T cells. WU-CART-007 was evaluated in a phase 1/2 study with a 3 + 3 dose-escalation design followed by cohort expansion in relapsed/refractory T-ALL/LBL.

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Purpose: Revumenib, an oral, small molecule inhibitor of the menin-lysine methyltransferase 2A (KMT2A) interaction, showed promising efficacy and safety in a phase I study of heavily pretreated patients with -rearranged () acute leukemia. Here, we evaluated the activity of revumenib in individuals with relapsed/refractory (R/R) acute leukemia.

Methods: AUGMENT-101 is a phase I/II, open-label, dose-escalation and expansion study of revumenib conducted across 22 clinical sites in five countries (ClinicalTrials.

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Infections lead to substantial morbidity during treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in which the adaptive immune system gets severely affected, leading to declining serum immunoglobulin levels. The aim of this trial was to investigate whether intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) prophylaxis in pediatric patients with ALL prevents admissions for fever. This randomized controlled trial was a subtrial of the national Dutch multicenter ALL study.

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In this study, we leveraged machine-learning tools by evaluating expression of genes of pharmacological relevance to standard-AML chemotherapy (ara-C/daunorubicin/etoposide) in a discovery-cohort of pediatric AML patients (N = 163; NCT00136084 ) and defined a 5-gene-drug resistance score (ADE-RS5) that was predictive of outcome (high MRD1 positivity p = 0.013; lower EFS p < 0.0001 and OS p < 0.

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Therapy-related myeloid neoplasms (t-MN) arise as a complication of chemo- and/or radiotherapy. Although t-MN can occur both in adult and childhood cancer survivors, the mechanisms driving therapy-related leukemogenesis likely vary across different ages. Chemotherapy is thought to induce driver mutations in children, whereas in adults pre-existing mutant clones are selected by the exposure.

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Precision cancer medicine brought the promise of improving outcomes for patients with cancer. High-throughput molecular profiling of tumors at treatment failure aims to direct a patient to a treatment matched to the tumor profile. In this way, improved outcome has been achieved in a small number of patients whose tumors exhibit unique targetable oncogenic drivers.

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Over the past 10 years, institutional and national molecular tumor boards have been implemented for relapsed or refractory pediatric cancer to prioritize targeted drugs for individualized treatment based on actionable oncogenic lesions, including the Dutch iTHER platform. Hematological malignancies form a minority in precision medicine studies. Here, we report on 56 iTHER leukemia/lymphoma patients for which we considered cell surface markers and oncogenic aberrations as actionable events, supplemented with ex vivo drug sensitivity for six patients.

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Article Synopsis
  • Inotuzumab ozogamicin is an approved treatment for relapsed/refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (BCP-ALL) in adults, but its pharmacokinetics in children have not been studied until now.
  • This research analyzed serum concentrations from a diverse patient group, utilizing a modified adult pharmacokinetic model to understand how the drug behaves in pediatric patients with BCP-ALL.
  • Results indicated that older pediatric patients showed a different drug clearance pattern, with higher drug exposure correlating to better treatment responses among those with relapsed/refractory BCP-ALL.
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Pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) exhibit favorable survival rates. However, for AML and ALL patients carrying gene translocations clinical outcome remains unsatisfactory. Key players in KMT2A-fusion-driven leukemogenesis include menin and DOT1L.

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The treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has reached overall survival rates exceeding 90%. The present and future challenges are to cure the remainder of patients still dying from disease, and to reduce morbidity and mortality in those who can be cured with standard-of-care chemotherapy by replacing toxic chemotherapy elements while retaining cure rates. With the novel therapeutic options introduced in the last years, including immunotherapies and targeted antibodies, the treatment of ALL is undergoing major changes.

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  • The Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer (ITCC) consortium aims to enhance access to new cancer treatments for children and adolescents, and its clinical trial progress from 2003 to 2018 was examined.
  • A total of 61 trials, primarily industry-sponsored, involved 3,198 patients, showing a significant increase in trials and a shift toward biomarker-driven and combination targeted therapies in the second study period.
  • The findings indicate a transformation in early drug development for childhood cancers, emphasizing more advanced trial designs and regulatory compliance to improve patient access to innovative treatments.
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  • von Willebrand disease (VWD) is a bleeding disorder that happens when a protein called von Willebrand factor (VWF) is missing or doesn’t work right in the body.
  • The study looked at how changes in the VWF gene affect the different types of VWF proteins found in the blood of patients, using advanced testing methods.
  • The researchers found that there are many different versions of VWF proteins in patients, which can help understand how this disease works and how to better diagnose and treat it.
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Article Synopsis
  • * Three new recurring KMT2A-rearranged groups were identified, and a significant variation in 5-year event-free survival rates was observed across 13 different groups, highlighting the impact of genetic factors on patient outcomes.
  • * The research suggests incorporating five specific adverse-risk KMT2A fusions into current risk stratification models and calls for further studies to confirm the associations
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Objectives: Childhood cancer survivors are at risk for premature ovarian insufficiency, especially after treatment with alkylating agents. The objective of this report is to highlight a case in which this phenomenon caused a false-positive pregnancy test.

Case Presentation: A workup was performed in a 14-year-old girl with a positive pregnancy test.

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While the introduction of T cell-based immunotherapies has improved outcomes in many cancer types, the development of immunotherapies for both adult and pediatric AML has been relatively slow and limited. In addition to the need to identify suitable target antigens, a better understanding of the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment is necessary for the design of novel immunotherapy approaches. To date, most immune characterization studies in AML have focused on T cells, while innate immune lineages such as monocytes, granulocytes and natural killer (NK) cells, received less attention.

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Here we report efficacy, pharmacokinetics, and safety data obtained in treatment-naive, pediatric patients with newly diagnosed advanced MDS receiving azacitidine in the AZA-JMML-001 study. The primary endpoint was response rate (proportion of patients with complete response [CR], partial response [PR], or marrow CR, sustained for ≥4 weeks). Of the 10 patients enrolled, one had an unconfirmed marrow CR and none had confirmed responses after three cycles; the study was therefore closed after stage 1.

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The Gárdos channel (KCNN4) and Piezo1 are the best-known ion channels in the red blood cell (RBC) membrane. Nevertheless, the quantitative electrophysiological behavior of RBCs and its heterogeneity are still not completely understood. Here, we use state-of-the-art biochemical methods to probe for the abundance of the channels in RBCs.

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