The glycosphingolipid GD2 as an effective but enigmatic target of passive immunotherapy in children with aggressive neuroblastoma (HR-NBL).

Neuroblastoma (NBL), the most frequent and lethal pediatric cancer of children in pre-school age, is considered enigmatic in view of its extreme heterogeneity, from spontaneous regression in the IV-S form to incurable disease in approx. 40% of cases (High Risk, HR-NBL). It has an embryonal origin and a very heterogeneous genomic landscape, hampering the success of targeted strategies.

Cancer modelling in the NGS era - Part I: Emerging technology and initial modelling.

It is today indisputable that great progresses have been made in our molecular understanding of cancer cells, but an effective implementation of such knowledge into dramatic cancer-cures is still belated and yet desperately needed. This review gives a snapshot at where we stand today in this search for cancer understanding and definitive treatments, how far we have progressed and what are the major obstacles we will have to overcome both technologically and for disease modelling. In the first part, promising 3rd/4th Generation Sequencing Technologies will be summarized (particularly IonTorrent and OxfordNanopore technologies).

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Cancer Related Fatigue (CRF): two "fatigue" syndromes with overlapping symptoms and possibly related aetiologies.

In July 2010, at the Muscle Fatigue Meeting, I presented an overview of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Cancer Related Fatigue, emphasizing a critical interpretation of the potential association between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Cancer Related Fatigue and a newly discovered retrovirus: Xenotropic Murine Related Virus. Since this association was hotly debated at that time, I suggested at the Meeting that it was wrong and most likely due to the identification of the wrong virus culprit. Today, 20 months after the Meeting, the first part of our prediction has turned out to be correct, as Xenotropic Murine Related Virus was shown to be a laboratory-created artefact.