Orcokinin in the central complex of the locust Schistocerca gregaria: Identification of immunostained neurons and colocalization with other neuroactive substances.

The central complex is a group of highly interconnected neuropils in the insect brain. It is involved in the control of spatial orientation, based on external compass cues and various internal needs. The functional and neurochemical organization of the central complex has been studied in detail in the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria.

Auditory cortex reflects goal-directed movement but is not necessary for behavioral adaptation in sound-cued reward tracking.

Mounting evidence suggests that the role of sensory cortices in perceptual decision making goes beyond the mere representation of the discriminative stimuli and additionally involves the representation of nonsensory variables such as reward expectation. However, the relevance of these representations for behavior is not clear. To address this issue, we trained rats to discriminate sounds in a single-interval forced-choice task and then confronted the animals with unsignaled blockwise changes of reward probabilities.

Armed and targeted measles virus for chemovirotherapy of pancreatic cancer.

No curative therapy is currently available for locally advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer. Therefore, new therapeutic approaches must be considered. Measles virus (MV) vaccine strains have shown promising oncolytic activity against a variety of tumor entities.

Prophylactic transfer of BCR-ABL-, PR1-, and WT1-reactive donor T cells after T cell-depleted allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia.

Donor lymphocyte infusions have been effective in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) relapsing after allogeneic stem cell transplantation, but their use is associated with the risk of graft-versus-host disease. We investigated the effects of prophylactic infusion of in vitro-generated donor T cells reactive against peptides derived from CML-associated antigens. Fourteen CML patients received conditioning therapy followed by CD34(+)-selected peripheral blood stem cells from matched siblings (n = 7) or unrelated (n = 7) donors.

The prostate stem cell antigen represents a novel glioma-associated antigen.

Gliomas of WHO grades III-IV are malignant brain tumors mostly resistant to conventional therapies. Therefore, novel strategies for the treatment of gliomas are warranted. Although immunotherapy is gaining increased attention for the treatment of malignant gliomas and in particular of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), this approach requires the identification of appropriate antigens.