Immunotherapy, including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, immune checkpoint inhibitors, cancer vaccines, and dendritic cell therapy, has been incorporated as a fifth modality of modern cancer care, along with surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and target therapy. Among them, CAR T-cell therapy emerges as one of the most promising treatments. In 2017, the first two CAR T-cell drugs, tisagenlecleucel and axicabtagene ciloleucel for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), respectively, were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In addition to the successful applications to hematological malignancies, CAR T-cell therapy has been investigated to potentially treat solid tumors, including pediatric brain tumor, which serves as the leading cause of cancer-associated death for children and adolescents. However, the employment of CAR T-cell therapy in pediatric brain tumors still faces multiple challenges, such as CAR T-cell transportation and expansion through the blood–brain barrier, and identification of the specific target antigen on the tumor surface and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Nevertheless, encouraging outcomes in both clinical and preclinical trials are coming to light. In this article, we outline the current propitious progress and discuss the obstacles needed to be overcome in order to unveil a new era of treatment in pediatric brain tumors.
A group of medical students from National Yang-Ming University in Taiwan has launched a series of events during this year at three different places in Taiwan. They aimed to promote mental health not only to the public but also to medical students in order to create a better medical environment for people with mental problems. The two concepts they tried to convey is firstly understanding the feelings of individuals struggling with mental illness. Secondly, equip people with a proper knowing about some major mental illness and understand that these people are not useless. In fact, they still own most of their abilities! After holding the events, feedbacks were mostly positive for learning medical knowledge of mental illness. However, participants paid more attention on the medical knowledge than the experiences of these people. We are concerned that people over focus on the disease itself may ignore what people with mental problems need. This will deprive the right of the individuals with mental illness. As they stay in hospitals for medication, their rights to participate in the society and their interest will be taken away, and this might end up leaving the people struggling with mental illness in a dull life. This is not what we called "healthy." Creating a mentally healthy society needs both prevention and creating a friendly environment. We wish to draw attention to the possible stigmatization through spreading the medical knowledge of mental disorders and the possibility of setting up barriers for people with mental problems.
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