A hypothesis to explain the enigmatic natural history of neuroblastoma

Abstract

A hypothesis is developed for neuroblastoma that attempts to explain the enigmatic natural history of this tumor and the variation in success of therapy as a function of the age of the child at diagnosis. It is postulated that neuroblastoma arising in the young patient has a relative paucity of clonogenically viable stem cells, whereas tumors arising in the older children have a substantial number of such clonogenic cells, as in most human tumors.