Publications by authors named "Halasz L"

Isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH)-mutant gliomas, comprising both astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas, represent a distinct group of tumors that pose an interdisciplinary challenge. Addressing the needs of affected patients requires close collaboration among various disciplines, including neuropathology, neuroradiology, neurosurgery, radiation oncology, neurology, medical oncology, and other relevant specialties when necessary. Interdisciplinary tumor boards are central in determining the ideal diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for these patients.

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Tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) are organized immune cell aggregates that arise in chronic inflammatory conditions. In cancer, TLS are associated with better prognosis and enhanced response to immunotherapy, making these structures attractive therapeutic targets. However, the mechanisms regulating TLS formation and maintenance in cancer are incompletely understood.

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  • IDH-mutant gliomas are the most common malignant brain tumors in young adults, causing significant challenges for patients, including cognitive deficits and high mortality due to tumor progression.
  • Current treatments like surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy enhance survival but can have negative impacts on cognitive function and quality of life.
  • The recent FDA approval of vorasidenib, a drug targeting mutant IDH1/2 proteins, represents a promising new approach, with ongoing trials exploring its use alongside other therapies for better patient outcomes.
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As the peak incidence of isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH)-mutant gliomas is amongst young adults, there is a need to balance tumor control with long term side effects of therapy. Following initial clinical presentation and acquisition of contrasted diagnostic imaging, tissue diagnosis is essential in suspected diffuse glioma. Depending on the location and extent of disease, maximal surgical resection is preferred both for histologic diagnosis and initial therapy.

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Unlabelled: Questions and recommendations from the prior version of these guidelines without changeTarget populationAdult patients (older than 18 years of age) with newly diagnosed World Health Organization (WHO) Grade II gliomas (Oligodendroglioma, astrocytoma, mixed oligoastrocytoma).QuestionIs there a role for chemotherapy as adjuvant therapy of choice in treatment of patients with newly diagnosed low-grade gliomas?RecommendationLevel III: Chemotherapy is recommended as a treatment option to postpone the use of radiotherapy, to slow tumor growth and to improve progression free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS) and clinical symptoms in adult patients with newly diagnosed LGG.QuestionWho are the patients with newly diagnosed LGG that would benefit the most from chemotherapy?RecommendationLevel III: Chemotherapy is recommended as an optional component alone or in combination with radiation as the initial adjuvant therapy for all patients who cannot undergo gross total resection (GTR) of a newly diagnosed LGG.

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  • Brain tumor survivors who underwent radiotherapy may face accelerated aging and symptom burdens, prompting a study on the impact of environmental enrichment on their health outcomes.
  • The study involved 39 participants diagnosed with low-grade gliomas, analyzing factors like social networks, physical activity, and financial stability, and their relationship to cognitive and overall health.
  • Results showed trends indicating that higher levels of environmental enrichment correlated with better health outcomes, suggesting the need for future research to explore this association more deeply over time.
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  • Sensory substitution through spinal cord stimulation (SCS) may restore auditory functions, as shown in a study with 13 patients where personalized SCS patterns translated everyday sounds.
  • Participants achieved an average accuracy of 72.8% in identifying sounds using SCS, significantly higher than the chance level of 33.3%, indicating the potential effectiveness of this method.
  • The study suggests that higher stimulation bitrates improve sound discrimination, highlighting the feasibility of using SCS technology as a sound prosthesis and encouraging further research into auditory rehabilitation.
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Introduction: Although stimulation-induced sensations are typically considered undesirable side effects in clinical DBS therapy, there are emerging scenarios, such as computer-brain interface applications, where these sensations may be intentionally created. The selection of stimulation parameters, whether to avoid or induce sensations, is a challenging task due to the vast parameter space involved. This study aims to streamline DBS parameter selection by employing a machine learning model to predict the occurrence and somatic location of paresthesias in response to thalamic DBS.

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  • Aging increases the risk of cancer by affecting how the immune system works, especially in lung tumors.
  • Older immune cells lead to the buildup of certain cells that produce IL-1⍺, which makes cancer grow faster.
  • By blocking IL-1R1 signaling early on, scientists found they could slow down cancer growth in the lungs, colon, and pancreas, and learned how aging is linked to worse cancer outcomes in humans.
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  • Macrophages are special cells that help heal damaged tissue by getting rid of dead cells and starting the healing process.
  • Scientists studied these cells in injured and sick muscles to understand how they work together to repair tissue.
  • They found different types of macrophages and discovered that their arrangement helps the body heal better, but certain treatments can mess up this healing process.
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Alveolar macrophages (AMs) act as gatekeepers of the lung's immune responses, serving essential roles in recognizing and eliminating pathogens. The transcription factor (TF) early growth response 2 (EGR2) has been recently described as required for mature AMs in mice; however, its mechanisms of action have not been explored. Here, we identified EGR2 as an epigenomic regulator and likely direct proximal transcriptional activator in AMs using epigenomic approaches (RNA sequencing, ATAC sequencing, and CUT&RUN).

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Monocyte-derived macrophages (mo-macs) drive immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment (TME) and tumor-enhanced myelopoiesis in the bone marrow (BM) fuels these populations. Here, we performed paired transcriptome and chromatin analysis over the continuum of BM myeloid progenitors, circulating monocytes, and tumor-infiltrating mo-macs in mice and in patients with lung cancer to identify myeloid progenitor programs that fuel pro-tumorigenic mo-macs. Analyzing chromatin accessibility and histone mark changes, we show that lung tumors prime accessibility for Nfe2l2 (NRF2) in BM myeloid progenitors as a cytoprotective response to oxidative stress.

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Anterior thalamus (ANT) deep-brain stimulation (DBS) is an approved therapy for drug resistant epilepsy. We aimed to identify interictal epileptiform discharges (IED) in the ANT and to investigate their relationship with surface IEDs. Fifteen patients were monitored for two consecutive nights with externalized thalamic leads to analyze the intrathalamic epileptiform activities (TIED).

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Adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) play an important role in the differential capacity for excess energy storage between upper body abdominal (ABD) adipose tissue (AT) and lower body gluteofemoral (GF) AT. We cultured ADSCs from subcutaneous ABD AT and GF AT isolated from eight women with differential body fat distribution and performed single-cell RNA sequencing. Six populations of ADSCs were identified and segregated according to their anatomical origin.

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  • Rexinoids, which activate nuclear receptors to regulate gene transcription, face challenges in clinical use due to side effects and unclear mechanisms across different cells.
  • Treatment with the rexinoids UAB30 and UAB110 increased levels of all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA), a key ligand for RXR-RAR complexes, in human epidermis.
  • Overexpression of a dominant negative RXRα reduced the effects of these rexinoids, indicating that their biological actions depend on the RXRα activation function and could potentially normalize ATRA levels in epithelial tissues affected by certain pathologies.
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The treatment of central nervous system tumors is still a major challenge for the oncological and neurosurgical teams. Due to the heterogeneous histological and topological characteristics of these neoplasms, every case requires individual evaluation. In addition to histology and stage, survival is largely determined by the extent of resection, which can be severely limited by the proximity of eloquent brain regions.

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The American Radium Society (ARS) Central Nervous System (CNS) committee reviewed literature on epidermal growth factor receptor mutated (EGFRm) and ALK-fusion (ALK+) tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) for the treatment of brain metastases (BrMs) from non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) to generate appropriate use guidelines addressing use of TKIs in conjunction with or in lieu of radiotherapy (RT). The panel developed three key questions to guide systematic review: can radiotherapy be deferred in patients receiving EGFR or ALK TKIs at (1) diagnosis or (2) recurrence? Should TKI be administered concurrently with RT (3)? Two literature searches were performed (May 2019 and December 2023). The panel developed 8 model cases and voted on treatment options using a 9-point scale, with 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9 corresponding to usually not appropriate, may be appropriate, and usually appropriate (respectively), per the UCLA/RAND Appropriateness Method.

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Purpose: Treatment decisions for leptomeningeal disease (LMD) rely on patient risk stratification, since clinicians lack objective prognostic tools. The introduction of rare cell capture technology for identification of cerebrospinal fluid tumor cells (CSF-TCs), such as CNSide assay, improved the sensitivity of LMD diagnosis, but prognostic value is unknown. This study assesses the prognostic value of CSF-TC density in patients with LMD from solid tumors.

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  • * Of the 39 patients treated, most were young males who received median radiation doses of 18 Gy to the brain and 12 Gy to the spine, with a 100% CNS-response rate in patients with CSF-positive disease.
  • * Results showed that CSI was well-tolerated with a low rate of CNS local recurrence (14%) after two years, highlighting that managing systemic disease is crucial for preventing CNS relapses.
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Sleep spindles are major oscillatory components of Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep, reflecting hyperpolarization-rebound sequences of thalamocortical neurons. Reports suggest a link between sleep spindles and several forms of high-frequency oscillations which are considered as expressions of pathological off-line neural plasticity in the central nervous system. Here we investigated the relationship between thalamic sleep spindles and ripples in the anterior and mediodorsal nuclei (ANT and MD) of epilepsy patients.

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The genome of human adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) from abdominal and gluteofemoral adipose tissue depots are maintained in depot-specific stable epigenetic conformations that influence cell-autonomous gene expression patterns and drive unique depot-specific functions. The traditional approach to explore tissue-specific transcriptional regulation has been to correlate differential gene expression to the nearest-neighbor linear-distance regulatory region defined by associated chromatin features including open chromatin status, histone modifications, and DNA methylation. This has provided important information; nonetheless, the approach is limited because of the known organization of eukaryotic chromatin into a topologically constrained three-dimensional network.

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Determining the mechanism driving body fat distribution will provide insights into obesity-related health risks. We used functional genomics tools to profile the epigenomic landscape to help infer the differential transcriptional potential of apple- and pear-shaped women's subcutaneous adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs). We found that CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) expression and its chromatin binding were increased in ADSCs from pear donors compared to those from apple donors.

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Background: Information transmission into the human nervous system is the basis for a variety of prosthetic applications. Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) systems are widely available, have a well documented safety record, can be implanted minimally invasively, and are known to stimulate afferent pathways. Nonetheless, SCS devices are not yet used for computer-brain-interfacing applications.

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Background And Objective: As novel systemic therapies allow patients to live longer with cancer, the risk of developing central nervous system (CNS) metastases increases and providers will more frequently encounter emergent presentation of brain metastases (BM) and leptomeningeal metastases (LM). Management of these metastases requires appropriate work-up and well-coordinated multidisciplinary care. We set out to perform a review of emergent radiotherapy (RT) for CNS metastases, specifically focusing on BM and LM.

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  • Macrophages play a key role in regulating blood vessel formation, especially during the later stages of angiogenesis, but the mechanisms behind this process are still not fully understood.
  • Research reveals that IL-4 can affect the balance of the VEGFA-VEGFR1 axis in macrophages by inhibiting proangiogenic signals while promoting antiangiogenic ones, thereby reducing their proangiogenic activity.
  • This regulation is linked to specific signaling pathways and transcription factors and is consistent across different types of macrophages, indicating that IL-4 influences their response to both oxygen availability and angiogenesis.
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