Ricerc@Sapienza

Purpose: to investigate clinical outcomes in patients with large brain metastases from non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received surgical resection and postoperative stereotactic radiosurgery or SRS alone. Patients and Methods: Two hundred and twenty-two patients with 241 large brain metastases (2–4 cm in size) who received surgery and multi-fraction SRS (mfSRS) to the resection cavity or mfSRS alone were analyzed. For all lesions the delivered dose was 3 x 9 Gy over three consecutive days. Primary endpoint of the study was local control (LC).

The treatment of high-grade gliomas (HGGs) remains a challenge for modern therapy. The prognosis for these patients has been poor. The median patient survival after diagnosis has been ∼1 year with surgery and/or radiotherapy and temozolomide.1 The need for a histological diagnosis of tumor tissue in each case and the importance of decompression in symptomatic patients are well established, and extensive surgical resection has been shown to significantly prolong survival.

In this chapter we describe the state of the art knowledge of the role played by myeloid cells in promoting and supporting the growth and the invasive properties of a deadly brain tumor, glioblastoma. We provide a review of the works describing the intercellular communication among glioma and associated microglia/macrophage cells (GAMs) using in vitro cellular models derived from mice, rats and human patients and in vivo animal models using syngeneic or xenogeneic experimental systems.

Background: The diagnosis of glioblastoma (GBM), a most aggressive primary brain tumor with a median survival of 14.6 months, carries a dismal prognosis. GBMs are characterized by numerous genetic and epigenetic alterations, affecting patient survival and treatment response. Epigenetic mechanisms are deregulated in GBM as a result of aberrant expression/activity of epigenetic enzymes, including histone deacetylases (HDAC) which remove acetyl groups from histones regulating chromatin accessibility.