SUMMARY STATEMENT 
You (your child) has received all of the drugs available that could possibly cure your (your 
child’s) neuroblastoma. Because the disease is no longer responding to these drugs we 
would like you to enter a research study that involves treatment with very high doses of 
chemotherapy followed by a bone marrow transplant 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 may come back. We do not know why this 
happens. We would therefore like you (your child) to receive marrow that has been marked. 
If the disease returns or progresses we may be able to learn if the malignant cells came from 
the marrow we put back. 
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 your 
(your child’s) disease. 
To do this part of the study, 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 fi*om 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 "neoR", 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. 
Recombinant DNA Research, Volume 14 
[731] 
