0000000000590322
AUTHOR
Martina Zimmermann
Postponed Is Not Canceled: Role of Craniospinal Radiation Therapy in the Management of Recurrent Infant Medulloblastoma—An Experience From the HIT-REZ 1997 & 2005 Studies
Purpose To evaluate the efficacy of craniospinal irradiation (CSI) in the management of recurrent infant medulloblastoma after surgery and chemotherapy alone. Methods and Materials Seventeen pediatric medulloblastoma patients registered in the HIT-REZ 1997 and 2005 studies underwent CSI as salvage treatment at first recurrence. All patients had achieved complete remission after first-line treatment consisting of surgery and chemotherapy. Eleven patients showed metastatic disease at relapse. Five patients underwent surgery prior to radiation therapy, which resulted in complete resection in 1 case. In 1 patient, complete resection of the residual tumor was performed after CSI. Eleven patients…
Direct and long-term detection of gene doping in conventional blood samples
The misuse of somatic gene therapy for the purpose of enhancing athletic performance is perceived as a coming threat to the world of sports and categorized as 'gene doping'. This article describes a direct detection approach for gene doping that gives a clear yes-or-no answer based on the presence or absence of transgenic DNA in peripheral blood samples. By exploiting a priming strategy to specifically amplify intronless DNA sequences, we developed PCR protocols allowing the detection of very small amounts of transgenic DNA in genomic DNA samples to screen for six prime candidate genes. Our detection strategy was verified in a mouse model, giving positive signals from minute amounts (20 μl)…