On Sunday, June 3, researchers from the Children's Oncology Group presented results at the ASCO annual meeting from a multinational study showing that a treatment regimen more patient-friendly than the current standard can achieve comparable survival rates among infants and children with intermediate risk neuroblastoma.

Researchers substituted carboplatin for cisplatin, a drug that can cause long-term side effects such as hearing loss, in the multi-agent drug treatments that they administered to study patients. They also reduced the length and number of cycles so that patients received 10 to 18 days of treatment over an 84- to 168-day period, as opposed to the standard 71 days of treatment over 286 days. The researchers compared the survival rate achieved by the new treatment with that observed for prior clinical trials of standard treatments.

After an average follow-up of 3 years, survival among the 467 infants and children was 96 percent, which is comparable to or better than that seen in large trials of standard treatment. Furthermore, less than 2 percent of the patients had major damage to their heart, kidney, liver, or hearing - a better than usual outcome.

"The paradigm we are continually striving for is to cure as many children as possible while reducing the burden of treatment," said the study's lead author, Dr. David Baker of Princess Margaret Hospital for Children in Perth, Australia, in an ASCO press briefing. "This goes a long way toward meeting that goal."