High-Risk Neuroblastoma Challenges and Opportunities for Antibody-Based Cellular Immunotherapy

Prof. Dr. Jeong A. Park is a pediatric hemato-oncologist from South Korea. Her research focus is the application of these cancer immunotherapeutic agents to a broad spectrum of pediatric malignancies, including neuroblastoma, osteosarcoma, and other solid tumors. Additionally, her research interests mainly include cancer immunotherapy, with a special focus on pediatric malignancies. She is also interested in immune evasion mechanisms and the tumor microenvironment which can affect the clinical response to immunotherapy.

Nai-Kong Cheung MD PhD, Enid A. Haupt Chair in Pediatric Oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York, specializes in immunologic approaches for diagnosing and treating pediatric cancers. He received his MD and his PhD in immunology from Harvard Medical School. Upon completing his pediatric training in Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Stanford University Medical Center, he has devoted his entire career to translational science, with a clinical focus on neuroblastoma, and a research focus on antibody-based therapies. Over three decades at MSK, he has developed from bench to the bedside several monoclonal antibodies, including 3F8 and its humanized form (hu3F8, naxitamab) specific for ganglioside GD2, and 8H9 (omburtamab) specific for B7-H3. For high-risk metastatic neuroblastoma, patient survival has steadily improved as 3F8 was successfully applied to eradicate bone marrow metastases, and 8H9 to salvage CNS relapses. Naxitamab received FDA breakthrough therapy designation (BTD) in 2017 and FDA approval in 2020.  More recently, Dr. Cheung has been devoted full time to laboratory research developing new antibody platforms to engage T cells and to improve precision in the delivery of beta particle and alpha particle therapies. He has published >400 peer-reviewed articles plus >70 book chapters or reviews, and he is named as an inventor on >50 patent families (either approved or pending approval) filed by MSK.