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Neuroblastoma, a tumor type found in children, has a remarkably variable clinical course. It can spontaneously regress or can proceed rapidly to cause death. An international group studied the structure and activity of genes that influence the “immortality” of tumor cells in 208 pretreatment neuroblastoma samples from patients with well-characterized clinical courses.
Whereas traditional factors, such as age at diagnosis and tumor stage, had little prognostic value, several molecular factors had great value (i.e., mutations in the RAS oncogene or the p53 tumor suppressor gene, or molecular evidence of impaired telomere maintenance). For example, 10-year disease-specific survival was about 20% in patients with preserved telomere maintenance (…