SUMMARY STATEMENT 
You are (your child is) in remission from neuroblastoma. But there is about an 80% chance 
that the cancer will return in the next 3-5 years. Once neuroblastoma comes back it is very 
hard to treat. We believe that the best way to prevent this is to give you (your child) very 
high doses of chemotherapy to kill any neuroblastoma cells that may be left. Then, a bone 
marrow transplant will be done using your (your child’s) own bone marrow. This is 
necessary because the chemotherapy also kills normal cells in the marrow. 
Even with this treatment, the neuroblastoma comes back in some cases. We do not know 
why this happens. We would like you (your child) to be in a research study to find out what 
happens in the body after the transplant. To do this, we will insert a "genetic marker" into 
some of your (your child’s) marrow cells before we return them to you (your child). Each 
step of the treatment plan is given below. 
STUDIES BEFORE TREATMENT 
To make sure the transplant is safe, we will test your (your child’s) blood for certain viruses. 
These include hepatitis B, which causes liver damage; cytomegalovirus, which causes lung 
damage; and HIV, which causes AIDS. We will also do other tests to plan your treatment. 
MARROW HARVEST AND MARKING 
Before the high-dose chemotherapy starts, we will remove a small part of your (your child’s) 
bone marrow from the hip bone. This will be done in the operating room under general 
anesthesia. You (your child) will not feel anything when the marrow is taken. There may 
be some pain later. You (your child) will be given medicine for the pain. 
If you agree (your child agrees) to be in the "marker" study, we will mix about one-third of 
the marrow with a special virus before we put the marrow back into your (your child’s) body. 
We will use a mouse virus that has been changed to keep it from causing infection. The 
marker, a gene called "neo^", is put inside this special virus. 
No bad effects have been seen in animal studies using these markers or in any person treated 
with marker genes. Still, there may be risks. It is possible that the mouse virus might 
"recover" in the cell and be able to grow; it might even cause cancer. We think this is very 
unlikely but we cannot rule it out yet. 
If you (your child) do not want to have this gene marking, a transplant can still be done with 
unmarked marrow. The benefits of this marker study would be a better understanding of 
neuroblastoma and of marrow transplants. This would help us plan better ways of treating 
neuroblastoma. If you (your child) needed another transplant in the future, these changes 
might help you (your child). Otherwise, what we learn might lead to better treatment for 
other patients with the disease. 
Recombinant DNA Research, Volume 14 
[697] 
