Survival amongst children with high-grade central nervous system (CNS) tumors is dismal. New treatment modalities are needed to increase survival and diminish morbidity. Immune therapies like CAR-T therapy, checkpoint inhibition and oncolytic viruses are new and promising options that need to be explored for these patients. In order to implement smart intervention trials for immune therapy, characterization of the immune system response in children with CNS tumors is crucial, since currently this information is hardly available.
Therefor, we aim to quantify and characterize the tumor immune microenvironment and to study the influence of the tumor on immune parameters in different compartments (eg. blood). We also set out to evaluate the effect of therapy on the immune profiles. This will give the opportunity to design tailored trials with immune therapy in the future and may give insight in prognostic markers for the different tumor entities.