Articles Tagged ‘leukemia’

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Pediatric Brain Tumors

April 26, 2005

Pediatric Patients at NCI

In the United States, 11,900 children and adolescents under the age of 20 were diagnosed with cancer in 2001 and about 2,200 died of the disease. The diagnosis of invasive brain and nervous system cancers accounts for 17 percent of all pediatric cancers, second only to acute lymphocytic leukemia. About half of the diagnosed cases of brain tumors are malignant.

Although there are fifty neuroepithelial pediatric tumor classifications, medulloblastoma, a tumor arising in the lower portion of the brain that can spread to other regions of the brain and spinal cord, is the most common type of malignant childhood central nervous system cancer. Astrocytomas, a malignancy of cells (astrocytes) located throughout the brain, and brain stem gliomas, tumors that grow in the central region of the brain which can involve the spinal cord, are other types of pediatric brain tumors.

Details of the Immunotoxin Trial

July 25, 2001

Moving immunotoxins from bench to bedside

Objectives

I. Assess the therapeutic efficacy and toxicity of the recombinant immunotoxin LMB-2, an anti-Tac murine monoclonal antibody fragment conjugated to a truncated portion of Pseudomonas exotoxin, in patients with Tac-expressing leukemias and lymphomas.

Moving Immunotoxins from Bench to Bedside

July 25, 2001

Moving immunotoxins from bench to bedside

In the July 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, NCI scientists published the extremely promising results of a recent Phase I clinical trial for hairy cell leukemia, which accounts for about 2 percent of all leukemias in the United States. BenchMarks recently sat down with three of the leaders of the research team to discuss the results and their implications. They are: Ira Pastan, M.D., chief of NCI’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology; David FitzGerald, Ph.D., who heads the Biotherapy Section of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology; and Robert Kreitman, M.D., who heads the Clinical Immunotherapy Section of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and who directed the clinical trial as principal investigator.

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