Small single-center study describes dinutuximab beta maintenance for high-risk neuroblastoma

A retrospective study at one Chinese center evaluated dinutuximab beta-based first-line maintenance in 13 children with newly diagnosed high-risk neuroblastoma treated through a Children’s Oncology Group-based multimodal pathway from 2021 to 2024. The study abstract reports that 3-year event-free survival measured from the first maintenance infusion was 69.2% (95% confidence interval, 44.1%–94.3%) during a median follow-up of 28.6 months. One death occurred, leaving overall-survival estimates immature.

Before maintenance treatment, 10 of the 13 children were in complete response and three were in partial response with marrow-confined disease; 10 had undergone autologous stem cell transplantation. At the end of immunotherapy, 11 children were classified as having complete response and two as having progressive disease. Four event-free-survival events were recorded: a pathology-confirmed parenchymal central nervous system relapse, a probable central nervous system relapse defined by MRI without histologic confirmation, non-central-nervous-system skull-base osseous progression with parameningeal extension, and abdominal nodal progression followed by death. No treatment-related deaths were reported.

Safety was summarized descriptively across 65 maintenance cycles: 41 immunotherapy-only cycles and 24 combined chemotherapy-immunotherapy cycles. Pain, cytokine release syndrome and capillary leak syndrome were predominantly low grade. Grade 3 or higher myelosuppression, neutropenia, infection and fever occurred numerically more often in combined cycles than in immunotherapy-only cycles: 83.3% versus 34.1%, 58.3% versus 9.8%, 37.5% versus 19.5%, and 37.5% versus 26.8%, respectively. The investigators did not perform formal statistical testing or within-patient adjustment to establish differences or attribute adverse events to individual treatment components.

The study included a contemporaneous 43-patient cohort—30 children who did not receive dinutuximab beta, including seven treated with naxitamab—only to provide context about treatment pathways and accessibility; it was not a comparator group. The authors cautioned that the small cohort entered maintenance with a low residual disease burden after multimodal treatment, so the observed outcomes cannot be attributed to dinutuximab beta alone. Cycle-stratified safety patterns were likewise descriptive, and the three heterogeneous cranial-region events were described as hypothesis-generating rather than evidence of an increased central-nervous-system relapse rate or a changed relapse spectrum.

Subject of Research: Single-center observational assessment of dinutuximab beta maintenance therapy in children with newly diagnosed high-risk neuroblastoma.

Article Title: Dinutuximab beta-based first-line maintenance therapy for newly diagnosed high-risk neuroblastoma following a COG-based pathway: a single-center real-world study in China

Article References: Yi, M., Chen, S., Xu, H., Liu, C., Lang, H., & Yuan, X. (2026). Dinutuximab beta-based first-line maintenance therapy for newly diagnosed high-risk neuroblastoma following a COG-based pathway: a single-center real-world study in China. BMC Cancer. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-026-16951-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12885-026-16951-x

Keywords: dinutuximab beta, high-risk neuroblastoma, pediatric cancer, maintenance therapy, event-free survival, adverse events, China, retrospective cohort, Dinutuximab, beta-based, first-line, maintenance