The Concept of the GPOH-HD 2003 Therapy Study for Pediatric Hodgkin's Disease: Evolution in the Tradition of the DAL/GPOH Studies

Abstract

Today it is possible to cure more than 90 % of children and adolescents with Hodgkin's disease with a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Since the DAL-HD 82 study, the main scientific focus has been on avoiding late effects such as the OPSI syndrome, late complications involving the heart, lungs, thyroid and/or gonads particularly sterility in men and premature onset of menopause in women, and the prevention of secondary malignancies. The GPOH-HD 2003 study will introduce FDG-PET to the initial diagnostic program and the assessment of response to therapy in order to evaluate further possibilities for reducing therapy. In this context, the central review of all clinical and radiological findings, systematically done since the DAL-HD 90 study, will be increasingly relevant in maintaining standardised stage classification and therapy group assignment which was established by the preceding studies. Continuing in the direction of the earlier studies, the indications for radiotherapy will be restricted even further. In the early stages (treatment group 1) patients with CR or a negative FDG-PET at the end of chemotherapy will receive no radiotherapy in order to reduce the risk of a secondary malignancy. In a randomized comparison, procarbazine will be replaced by dacarbazine in the COPP cycles to determine whether sterility in men and premature onset of menopause in women can be avoided by elimination of procarbazine while retaining the same clinical efficacy. Finally, relapse therapy is to be tailored according to the time of relapse, the initial therapy group, and the patient's response to the relapse therapy with more patients receiving autologous transplantation in order to further improve the results of relapse treatment.

FDG-PET Response Prediction in Pediatric Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: Impact of Metabolically Defined Tumor Volumes and Individualized SUV Measurements on the Positive Predictive Value

“…Written informed consent was obtained from all patients and/or parents. Staging was performed according to the Ann Arbor classification [ 23 ] and all patients were subsequently stratified to the appropriate therapy groups (TG): TG1, stage IA/B to IIA; TG2, stage IEA to IIIA; TG3, stage IIEB to IVB) and treated according to the appropriate treatment optimization protocol (TOP) (GPOH-HD2002P, GPOH-HD2003, EuroNet-PHL-C1) [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ]. In addition to conventional imaging methods (CIM) all patients underwent two FDG-PET or FDG-PET/CT examinations: PET1 before administration of any anti-neoplastic treatment and PET2 after completion of the first two cycles of chemotherapy.…”

Knock-Down of PRAME Increases Retinoic Acid Signaling and Cytotoxic Drug Sensitivity of Hodgkin Lymphoma Cells

“…With the combination of radio- and chemotherapy the majority of patients with HL can be cured. However, the established therapy is associated with a plethora of late adverse side effects and some patients with chemo-resistant disease cannot be cured [6]–[10]. Therefore it is important to search for new treatment strategies for patients with Hodgkin lymphoma.…”

Curcuma Contra Cancer? Curcumin and Hodgkin's Lymphoma

“…However, the established therapy is associated with the induction of secondary malignancies, cardiac toxicities, and treatment-related infertility 133–135. In addition, up to 10% of patients still cannot be cured with current therapy regimes, which represent a significant number 136,137. Thus, there is a clear demand to search for new treatment options and also for optimization of current treatment strategies by identifying potential treatment resistance mechanisms.…”