European association involved in the research and care of children with neuroblastoma - SIOPEN

Since the last SIOPEN General Assembly in Berlin, the Radiotherapy Committee welcomed four more new members: Joanna Bartoszewska from Poland, Erica Collado from Spain, Dan Saunders from the UK and Katia Alexopoulou from Greece. The committee met in Annecy in spring 2018 and in autumn 2018 in Jerusalem, on both occasions in conjunction with a SIOPEN meeting.

In Annecy the radiotherapy proposal for HR-NBL2 was finalised and resulted in the approval of a randomised radiotherapy question for patients with residual disease.

Patients in HR-NBL2 who qualify for radiotherapy will be divided according to whether or not there is macroscopic residual disease after surgery. In case of complete surgical excision, they will be treated with 21.6 Gy on the tumour bed, which is the current SIOPEN standard for all patients, regardless of completeness of resection.
However, if there is macroscopic residual tumour, they will be randomised to 21.6 Gy to the tumour bed or 21.6 Gy to the tumour bed followed by a boost of 14.4 Gy to the residual disease volume, which then gets 36 Gy, the latter being the current German standard.
The committee met in Jerusalem to further develop the radiotherapy quality assurance guidelines for HR-NBL2. As had been approved at the SIOPEN meeting in Annecy, prospective radiotherapy quality assurance will be performed on the SIOPE
QUARTET platform. The committee members agreed to act as reviewers for this trial.

The key objectives of the radiotherapy committee for the near future are:

1. To continue the retrospective radiotherapy quality assurance for the HR-NBL1 study and its correlation with local control.
2. To finalise the radiotherapy quality assurance guidelines and implement their practicalities.
3. To perform prospective radiotherapy quality assurance