Preliminary experience with personalized and targeted therapy for pediatric brain tumors.

Background: A new generation of anticancer drugs has reached clinical care in common diseases, but their use in rare diseases such as pediatric brain tumors lags behind since conventional clinical trial design requires larger patient numbers.

Procedure: We designed individualized treatment protocols for pediatric patients with relapsed brain tumors, based upon the patient's treatment history. In addition, each tumor was analyzed with morphoproteomics using a panel of markers to show treatment targets, resulting in a list of potential novel drugs to be added to chemotherapy.

Treatment of recurrent diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma: the MD Anderson Cancer Center experience.

Recurrent diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPG) are traditionally treated with palliative care since no effective treatments have been described for these tumors. Recently, clinical studies have been emerging, and individualized treatment is attempted more frequently. However, an informative way to compare the treatment outcomes has not been established, and historical control data are missing for recurrent disease.

Induction treatment for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, experience of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Background: The biology of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma remains poorly understood and the dismal prognosis has not changed despite various attempts to add chemotherapy to standard radiation.

Patients And Methods: A retrospective chart review was carried out of patients with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma treated at M.D.

Pediatric neuro-oncology in small centers--quality control of network support: the HIT-GBM experience.

Background: The quality of care for children with brain tumors might be higher in large medical centers; however, it may be possible to improve the quality of care received in smaller centers if they join an effective network.

Aim: This study used the HIT-GBM® database to compare the quality of care provided to pediatric high-grade glioma and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma patients among various medical centers of differing sizes.

Patients And Methods: Overall survival was used as a defining parameter.