Alternative treatments for childhood brain tumors.

The treatment options for children with brain tumors are quite limited. Advances in tumor biology and neuroscience have opened new avenues of treatment. New approaches include gene therapy, agents designed to interfere with signal transduction, antiangiogenesis drugs, maturation agents, immunotherapy, and immunoconjugates. New means of drug/agent delivery, including drugs that selectively open the tumor-blood barrier and convection-infusional approaches, are under study. Such innovative treatments will be more widely employed in the years ahead and may improve outcome for children with brain tumors.