Clinical Trial for Patients With a Stage IV Childhood Renal Tumor, Comparing Upfront Vincristine, Actinomycin-D and Doxorubicin (Standard Arm) With Upfront Vincristine, Carboplatin and Etoposide (Experimental Arm)

Nephroblastoma (Wilms tumor, WT) is the most common renal tumor of childhood representing ± 6% of all childhood malignancies. The diagnosis is established on clinical and radiological grounds. Metastases are visible on conventional imaging in at least 12% of nephroblastoma patients; however, an additional \~15% of patients have nodules on CT-scan only. The treatment consists of neoadjuvant (preoperative) chemotherapy, nephrectomy and risk-based adjuvant chemotherapy ± radiation therapy (RT) to the flank and/or metastases. For truly localized tumors, overall survival is \> 85% (high risk histology excluded). Several high risk biological characteristics have been identified: diffuse anaplasia, gain of 1q chromosome, loss of heterozygosity 1p + 16q, blastemal residual volume. For metastatic nephroblastoma, the standard neo-adjuvant chemotherapy includes 3 drugs: vincristine, actinomycin-D and doxorubicin (VAD). Long-term survival is 82% (1). However, two issues arise. First, the use of doxorubicin ± concomitant RT might be associated with cardiac and pulmonary sequelae (4-17% of congestive heart failure) (2), and actinomycin-D is associated with hepatic toxicity (3). Second, patients with "CT-only" nodules are treated according to "localized disease". However, their outcome is poorer than that of truly "localized disease" (4-6). The efficacy of carboplatin and etoposide is known for a long time; these drugs are used as second line treatment or for high-risk histology nephroblastoma. Therefore, an alternate chemotherapy has been designed that combines drugs shown as highly efficacious in nephroblastoma, i.e., Vincristine, Carboplatin and Etoposide (VCE). VCE has been used for the treatment of other pediatric malignancies. For metastatic nephroblastoma, the switch from VAD to VCE and the associated reduction of actinomycin-D and doxorubicin is expected to reduce the chemotherapy-related long-term toxicity. In addition, VCE could potentially decrease the rate of patient