[Physical and technical quality assurance and radiation protection in transperineal interstitial permanent prostate brachytherapy with 125-iodine seeds].

Background: Early stage prostate cancer can be treated successfully by interstitial brachytherapy with 125-iodine seeds. A quality-assurance programme is presented that was designed for this purpose for internal clinical use. Furthermore the requirements of the new German Ordinance Governing Radiation Protection (StrlSchV) that came into force on August 1, 2001, are taken into account.

[Physical basics and clinical realization of interstitial brachytherapy of the prostate with iodine 125].

Background: Interstitial brachytherapy with I-125 seeds can be used for successful treatment of early stage prostate cancer. There is presented the technique of permanent transperineal implantation of I-125 seeds with intraoperative treatment planning which is suited for the treatment of prostate cancer up to the clinical stage of T2a.

Material And Methods: Some weeks before the implantation of the seeds the prostate volume is determined using transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) so as to estimate the required number of I-125 seeds.

Integrated functional genomics approach for the design of patient-individual antitumor vaccines.

Our aim is to identify as many candidates as possible for tumor-associated T-cell epitopes in individual patients. First, we performed expression profiling of tumor and normal tissue to identify genes exclusively expressed or overexpressed in the tumor sample. Then, using mass spectrometry, we characterized up to 77 different MHC ligands from the same tumor sample.