Recurrent Glioblastoma: A Review of the Treatment Options.

Glioblastoma is a disease with a poor prognosis. Multiple efforts have been made to improve the long-term outcome, but the 5-year survival rate is still 5-10%. Recurrence of the disease is the usual way of progression.

Current Landscape of Immunotherapy for Advanced Sarcoma.

There is substantial heterogeneity between different subtypes of sarcoma regarding their biological behavior and microenvironment, which impacts their responsiveness to immunotherapy. Alveolar soft-part sarcoma, synovial sarcoma and undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma show higher immunogenicity and better responses to checkpoint inhibitors. Combination strategies adding immunotherapy to chemotherapy and/or tyrosine-kinase inhibitors globally seem superior to single-agent schemes.

Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors for the Treatment of Recurrent and Unresectable Bone Sarcomas.

Bone sarcomas are a heterogeneous group of rare tumors with a predominance in the young population. Few options of systemic treatment are available once they become unresectable and resistant to conventional chemotherapy. A better knowledge of the key role that tyrosine kinase receptors (VEGFR, RET, MET, AXL, PDGFR, KIT, FGFR, IGF-1R) may play in the pathogenesis of these tumors has led to the development of multi-target inhibitors (TKIs) that are progressively being incorporated into our therapeutic arsenal.

Prognostic value of circulating endothelial cells in glioblastoma patients: a pilot study.

Aim: Glioblastoma (GB) is an aggressive tumor type and the detection of circulating endothelial cells (CECs) in peripheral blood has been related to angiogenesis.

Materials & Methods: A prospective single-center pilot study of CEC detection at diagnosis in 22 patients with GB was performed, using the US FDA-approved CellSearch system.

Results: A CEC cutoff value was estimated using a receiver operating curve (ROC) and patients were classified into two groups: <40 CEC/4 ml and >40 CEC/4 ml blood.

Indoor Radon in EGFR- and BRAF-Mutated and ALK-Rearranged Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Patients.

Background: Radon gas is the leading cause of lung cancer in the nonsmoking population. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends indoor concentrations of < 100 Bq/m³. Several molecular alterations have been described in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), mainly in nonsmokers, with no risk factors identified.

Enrichment of rare genetic variants in astrocyte gene enriched co-expression modules altered in postmortem brain samples of schizophrenia.

The transcriptome profiles of the cingulate gyrus region from the postmortem brain tissues of a set of well-characterized patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) and matched controls were investigated using an integrated approach that analyzed both the alterations in transcription expression pattern and rare genetic variants in expressed genes. We demonstrated increased expression of astrocyte-related genes using spatiotemporal co-expression modules that have previously been established for developing human brain, and showed these results are independent of medication dosage. The relationship between genetic variants and expression pattern in the context of neurodevelopment was further investigated, and we identified an enrichment of rare genetic variants in a set of signature genes that were specific to astrocytes and up-regulated in the patients with SCZ.

Gastrostomy vs nasogastric tube feeding in patients with head and neck cancer during radiotherapy alone or combined chemoradiotherapy.

Introduction: Patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) submitted to radiotherapy alone or combined chemoradiotherapy present a high prevalence of malnutrition at baseline. Prophylactic use of gastrostomy has been suggested for these patients for delivering enteral nutrition. On the other hand, other authors have failed to demonstrate the effectiveness of this measure over nasogastric tube feeding.