Gamma Knife Radiosurgery in Recurrent Glioblastoma.

Background: We evaluated Gamma Knife radiosurgery (GKRS) as a treatment option for patients with recurrent glioblastoma.

Patients And Methods: 42 patients with histopathologically diagnosed recurrent grade IV tumor were treated with GKRS. All patients had undergone standard multimodal first-line treatment.

Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation Is a Feasible Rescue Therapeutic Option for Patients Suffering from Graft Failure after Previous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation.

Objective: Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is an important graft source for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (SCT). Due to less stringent human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matching criteria compared to bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells, UCB enables patients lacking an HLA-matched donor to receive potentially curative SCT.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the efficacy and safety of UCB transplantation (UCBT) at our center.

Response to imatinib as a function of target kinase expression in recurrent glioblastoma.

Background: Despite some progress in the treatment of glioblastoma, most patients experience tumor recurrence. Imatinib mesylate, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor of platelet derived growth factor receptor-alpha and -beta, c-fms, c-kit, abl and arg kinase (imatinib targets), has been shown to prevent tumor progression in early studies of recurrent gliomas, but has shown weak activity in randomized controlled trials. We studied the response to oral imatinib in 24 patients with recurrent glioblastoma who showed immunohistochemical expression of these imatinib targets in the initially resected tumor tissue.

Thalidomide as palliative treatment in patients with advanced secondary glioblastoma.

Background: For its numerous abilities including sedation, we have been using thalidomide (TH) as the 'last therapeutic option' in patients with advanced gliomas. We noticed that a small subgroup, i.e.