Publications by authors named "Wick W"
Background: Diffuse hemispheric glioma, histone 3 (H3) G34-mutant, has been newly defined in the 2021 WHO classification of central nervous system tumors. Here we sought to define the prognostic roles of clinical, neuroimaging, pathological, and molecular features of these tumors.
Methods: We retrospectively assembled a cohort of 114 patients (median age 22 years) with diffuse hemispheric glioma, H3 G34-mutant, CNS WHO grade 4 and profiled the imaging, histological and molecular landscape of their tumors.
Deepening our understanding of neuro-cancer interactions can innovate brain tumor treatment. This mini review unfolds the most relevant and recent insights into the neural mechanisms contributing to brain tumor initiation, progression, and resistance, including synaptic connections between neurons and cancer cells, paracrine neuro-cancer signaling, and cancer cells' intrinsic neural properties. We explain the basic and clinical-translational relevance of these findings, identify unresolved questions and particularly interesting future research avenues, such as central nervous system neuro-immunooncology, and discuss the potential transferability to extracranial cancers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study aimed to explore the potential of the Advanced Data Analytics (ADA) package of GPT-4 to autonomously develop machine learning models (MLMs) for predicting glioma molecular types using radiomics from MRI.
Methods: Radiomic features were extracted from preoperative MRI of = 615 newly diagnosed glioma patients to predict glioma molecular types (IDH-wildtype vs IDH-mutant 1p19q-codeleted vs IDH-mutant 1p19q-non-codeleted) with a multiclass ML approach. Specifically, ADA was used to autonomously develop an ML pipeline and benchmark performance against an established handcrafted model using various MRI normalization methods (N4, Zscore, and WhiteStripe).
Background: The majority of patients diagnosed with glioblastoma are >60 years. Three randomized trials addressed the roles of radiotherapy (RT) and temozolomide (TMZ) for elderly patients. NORDIC and NOA-08 compared RT versus TMZ, while CE.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) imaging has emerged as a promising imaging biomarker, but its reliability for clinical practice remains uncertain. This study aimed to investigate the robustness of CEST parameters in healthy volunteers and patients with brain tumours.
Methods: A total of n = 52 healthy volunteers and n = 52 patients with histologically confirmed glioma underwent two consecutive 3-T MRI scans separated by a 1-min break.
Objectives: Recurrent glioma is highly treatment resistant due to its metabolic, cellular, and molecular heterogeneity and invasiveness. Tumor monitoring by conventional MRI has shortcomings to assess these key glioma characteristics. Recent studies introduced chemical exchange saturation transfer for metabolic imaging in oncology and assessed its diagnostic value for newly diagnosed glioma.
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- Glioblastoma (GB) is a severe brain tumor with a poor prognosis, and while there are treatment guidelines for newly diagnosed cases, there’s a lack of consensus on treating progressive GB.
- A systematic meta-analysis reviewed 16 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving 3025 patients to evaluate the effectiveness of targeted therapies for progressive GB.
- The analysis found some targeted agents like regorafenib and combinations of therapies improved overall survival and progression-free survival, but results should be approached cautiously due to methodological weaknesses in the studies.
This study explores the potential of H-NMR spectroscopy-based metabolic profiling in various biofluids as a diagnostic and predictive modality to assess disease severity in individuals with 5q spinal muscular atrophy. A total of 213 biosamples (urine, plasma, and CSF) from 153 treatment-naïve patients with SMA across five German centers were analyzed using H-NMR spectroscopy. Prediction models were developed using machine learning algorithms which enabled the patients with SMA to be grouped according to disease severity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)+ and EBV- primary CNS lymphomas (PCNSL) carry distinct mutational landscapes, but their transcriptional and epigenetic profiles have not been integrated and compared. This precludes further insights into pathobiology and molecular differences, relevant for classification and targeted therapy.
Methods: 23 EBV- and 15 EBV+ PCNSL, histologically classified as diffuse large B-cell lymphomas, were subjected to RNA-Sequencing and EPIC methylation arrays.
Background: Meningiomas are the most common primary intracranial tumours in adults. Several studies proposed new stratification systems with a more accurate risk prediction than the WHO grading, e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Homozygous deletions of CDKN2A/B are known to predict poor prognosis in gliomas, but the impact of hemizygous deletions is less clear. This study aimed to evaluate the prognostic significance of hemizygous CDKN2A/B deletions in IDH-mutant low-grade astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas.
Methods: Tissue samples diagnosed as astrocytoma, IDH-mutant and oligodendroglioma, IDH-mutant, 1p/19q co-deleted CNS WHO grade 2 and 3 were collected from the archives of the Institute of Neuropathology in Heidelberg.
Lymphomatous infiltration of the peripheral nervous system (PNS), termed neurolymphomatosis, represents a distinct extranodal non-Hodgkin lymphoma variant with dismal outcome. CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CD19-CAR) T-cell therapy has emerged as a safe and effective treatment for B-cell lymphomas. We aimed to assess toxicity and efficacy of CD19-CAR T-cells in neurolymphomatosis.
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- Primary optic nerve sheath meningiomas (ONSMs) are benign tumors that can cause gradual vision loss, and radiation therapy, particularly proton therapy, is key for treatment as it may improve visual function while minimizing side effects.* -
- In a study of 32 patients treated with proton beam radiotherapy, results showed a 100% local control rate after 5 years and 84.4% of patients experienced improved or stable vision, despite a 9.4% occurrence of radiation-induced optic neuropathy (RION).* -
- The findings support proton beam therapy as a safe and effective option for ONSM treatment, though further research is needed to compare its effectiveness against traditional photon radiotherapy.*
Article Synopsis
- AI models usually struggle when applied to new datasets after being developed, leading to lower performance.
- This study explored the use of a data augmentation method through generative adversarial networks (GAN) to create synthetic patient images, aiming to enhance the AI model's ability to generalize across different datasets.
- Results showed that models using synthetic data achieved much better performance on external tests compared to those that did not, indicating that this approach could be beneficial in other medical imaging tasks as well.*
Article Synopsis
- Accurate grading of IDH-mutant gliomas is crucial for predicting patient outcomes and selecting treatment strategies, yet histological grading remains difficult, with limited molecular markers available.
- Researchers performed RNA-sequencing on 138 IDH-mutant astrocytomas from the CATNON trial and analyzed multi-omics data to create a Continuous Grading Coefficient (CGC), which proved to be a better survival predictor than current grading systems.
- The study identified four distinct transcriptional clusters linked to various gene expression patterns, revealing that higher-grade IDH-mutant astrocytomas exhibit DNA-methylation signatures correlated with increased cell cycling, tumor de-differentiation, and changes in the extracellular matrix.
Article Synopsis
- Research on improving brain tumor immunotherapy focuses on understanding how T cells enter the tumor area from the bloodstream, specifically through a type of blood vessel called peritumoral venous vessels (PVVs).
- In mouse models of intracranial melanoma, T cells were found to preferentially move through PVVs, while other blood vessels were less involved in T cell recruitment.
- Treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors, like anti-PD-1/CTLA-4, boosted T cell movement from PVVs to tumors, slowing tumor growth, and highlighting the importance of the ICAM-1 molecule in this process, which could have implications for other brain diseases as well.
Glioblastoma is characterized by a pronounced resistance to therapy with dismal prognosis. Transcriptomics classify glioblastoma into proneural (PN), mesenchymal (MES) and classical (CL) subtypes that show differential resistance to targeted therapies. The aim of this study was to provide a viable approach for identifying combination therapies in glioblastoma subtypes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Perfusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)s plays a central role in the diagnosis and monitoring of neurovascular or neurooncological disease. However, conventional processing techniques are limited in their ability to capture relevant characteristics of the perfusion dynamics and suffer from a lack of standardization.
Purpose: We propose a physics-informed deep learning framework which is capable of analyzing dynamic susceptibility contrast perfusion MRI data and recovering the dynamic tissue response with high accuracy.
Article Synopsis
- Intravital 2P-microscopy facilitates the study of brain tumor behavior in mouse cortex, previously limited by imaging challenges in deep brain areas.
- The new Deep3P imaging workflow combines microscopy with artificial intelligence, allowing researchers to visualize glioblastoma infiltrating up to 1.2 mm into the brain.
- The study reveals that glioblastoma primarily invades through blood vessels in the white matter, and identifies potential imaging biomarkers associated with early tumor colonization.
Article Synopsis
- This study explored the use of shape radiomic features and tumor volume to classify IDH-wildtype gliomas and their relation to overall survival.
- A total of 436 patients' preoperative MR imaging data was analyzed, leading to the identification of two distinct tumor clusters with significantly different survival outcomes (Cluster 1: median OS 23.8 months, Cluster 2: median OS 11.4 months).
- The findings suggest that incorporating shape-radiomics along with tumor volume improves survival predictions for high-grade gliomas compared to using tumor volume alone.
Introduction: Patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and large-vessel occlusion are frequently transferred by emergency physicians (EPs) from primary to comprehensive stroke centers (CSC) for thrombectomy, particular when thrombolysed. Data on complications during such transfers are highly limited.
Patients And Methods: Consecutive AIS patients transferred between 01/2015 and 10/2021 to our CSC were included.
Background: Gliomas are highly invasive brain neoplasms. MRI is the most important tool to diagnose and monitor glioma but has shortcomings. In particular, the assessment of tumor cell invasion is insufficient.
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