New treatment for retinoblastoma

  Early symptoms of retinoblastoma are mainly vision loss, strabismus, and white pupils, and most of them develop within 3 years of age. Because of the early age of onset, children do not complain of symptoms and often go to the hospital late to discover abnormalities. For children with advanced disease, on the basis of chemotherapy, it is still impossible to avoid the fate of eye removal and orbital contents gouging out, and some of them have intracranial or even distant metastases at the time of consultation, so they do not even have the chance of surgery. For these children, even if chemotherapy shrinks the tumor and even if eye removal or orbital contents are removed, a large proportion of them will still have recurrence and eventually lose their lives after stopping the medication. Therefore, it is crucial to find a safe and effective adjuvant therapy in addition to chemotherapy and surgery for children with advanced disease to change their prognosis and reduce the rate of disability and death.  Cell therapy is a kind of adjuvant treatment for tumors that has emerged in recent years. It has been widely used in the treatment of many kinds of tumors in adults and has achieved promising results. Since 2010, our department has been providing CIK cell therapy for mid- to late-stage retinoblastoma on the basis of chemotherapy with promising results. All children have improved appetite and spirit, increased resistance to infection, increased ability to tolerate chemotherapy, shortened interval of myelosuppression caused by chemotherapy, and significant tumor shrinkage after cell therapy. No serious adverse effects occurred in all children, and only a few children had transient fever, which could be reduced to normal by drinking more water.