Connexin43 Expression and Associated Chronic Inflammation Presages the Development of Cerebral Radiation Necrosis.

Cerebral radiation necrosis (CRN) is a delayed complication of radiosurgery that can result in severe neurological deficits. The biological changes leading to necrotic damage may identify therapeutic targets for this complication. Connexin43 expression associated with chronic inflammation may presage the development of CRN.

Perfluorocarbon emulsions radiosensitise brain tumors in carbogen breathing mice with orthotopic GL261 gliomas.

Background: Tumour hypoxia limits the effectiveness of radiation therapy. Delivering normobaric or hyperbaric oxygen therapy elevates pO2 in both tumour and normal brain tissue. However, pO2 levels return to baseline within 15 minutes of stopping therapy.

A novel, rapidly acquired and persistent spatial memory task that induces immediate early gene expression.

Background: The Morris water maze task is a hippocampus-dependent learning and memory test that typically takes between 3 days to 2 weeks of training. This task is used to assess spatial learning and induces the expression of genes known to be crucial to learning and memory in the hippocampus. A major caveat in the protocol is the prolonged duration of training, and difficulty of assessing the time during training in which animals have learned the task.

Enhanced immunity to intracerebral breast cancer in mice immunized with a cDNA-based vaccine enriched for immunotherapeutic cells.

Structural differences between malignant and nonmalignant cells of the same individual form the basis of clinical immunotherapeutic strategies. Previously, we reported the therapeutic properties of a vaccine prepared by transfer of a cDNA-expression library from breast cancer cells into a highly immunogenic allogeneic fibroblast cell line where genes specifying an array of breast cancer antigens were expressed. Here, we report the application of this cell-based vaccination strategy for breast cancer metastatic to the brain.