2025 Volume 62 Issue 3 Pages 185-190
Aside from leukemia, brain tumors represent the most common type of malignant tumors encountered in pediatric patients. Recent advances in genetic analysis techniques have changed how pediatric brain tumors are diagnosed and classified, and some molecular-targeted therapies have proven to be more effective against particular tumor types. However, many types of pediatric brain tumors still carry poor prognoses, even though they are treated using intensive therapies. Effective molecular targeted therapies are warranted, but have not yet been developed for most of these tumors. Recently, CAR T-cell therapy has been used to effectively treat CD19+ acute lymphoblastic leukemia. However, this therapy has not yet been well established against other types of pediatric malignancies in clinical settings. In particular, suitable antigens for molecular-targeted therapies against pediatric brain tumors have not yet been established. Although flow cytometry (FCM) has been conventionally applied in clinical settings for treating leukemia, the confirmation of brain tumor antigen expression typically relies on immunohistochemistry—the results of which largely relate to diagnostic significance rather than identifying therapeutic targets. Therefore, we chose to separate and analyze pediatric brain tumor samples obtained surgically via FCM, to identify which surface antigens were most widely expressed, regardless of the tumor type. We also obtained several samples of exceedingly rare tumor types, from which we established both in vitro cell lines and in vivo murine disease models.
