BACKGROUND Cultured brain tumors can form neurospheres harboring tumorigenic cells with self renewal and differentiation capacities. Renewable neurosphere formation has clinical predictive value in adult malignant gliomas, yet its prognostic role for pediatric brain tumors is unknown. METHODS Established neurosphere conditions were used for culturing samples from glial, embryonal and mixed gl...

Although Notch signaling has been widely implicated in neoplastic growth, direct evidence for in vivo initiation of neoplasia by the pathway in murine models has been limited to tumors of lymphoid, breast, and choroid plexus cells. To examine tumorigenic potential in the eye and brain, we injected retroviruses encoding activated forms of Notch1, Notch2, or Notch3 into embryonic mice. Interestin...

Although Notch signaling has been widely implicated in neoplastic growth, direct evidence for in vivo initiation of neoplasia by the pathway in murine models has been limited to tumors of lymphoid, breast, and choroid plexus cells. To examine tumorigenic potential in the eye and brain, we injected retroviruses encoding activated forms of Notch1, Notch2, or Notch3 into embryonic mice. Interestin...

Background: The most common primary tumors of brain are gliomas. Grading of tumor is vital for designing proper treatment plans. The gold standard choice to determine the grade of glial tumor is biopsy which is an invasive method.Objective: In this study, we try to investigate the role of fractional anisotropy (diffusion anisotropy) and linear anisotropy ...

The vast majority of brain tumors in adults exhibit glial characteristics. Brain tumors in children are diverse: Many have neuronal characteristics, whereas others have glial features. Here we show that activation of the Gi protein-coupled receptor CXCR4 is critical for the growth of both malignant neuronal and glial tumors. Systemic administration of CXCR4 antagonist AMD 3100 inhibits growth o...

Background: Metastasis of systemic neoplasms to the spine is common; however, metastasis primary spinal cord tumors other regions in body an infrequent occurrence. A few case reports have described tumors, and most cases, patients were younger than 30 years age. Case Description: We present illustrative a 47-year-old female with metastatic lesions lumbosacral vertebrae after initial diagnosis i...

Molecular genetic analysis of von Hippel-Lindau tumor suppressor gene (VHL gene) was performed on 38 tissues of human glial tumors (ependymoma, 1; astrocytoma, 6; oligodendroglioma, 1; oligoastrocytoma, 2; anaplastic oligoastrocytoma, 3; anaplastic astrocytoma, 14; glioblastoma multiforme, 11). Somatic DNAs extracted from frozen tumor specimens were examined by single-strand conformational poly...

BACKGROUND CD117 is a thyrosin kinase receptor encoded by c-kit proto-oncogene. It is expressed during normal development in some tissues and also in a subset of neoplasia especially gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). Treatment with thyrosin kinase inhibitors (e.g., Imatinib) is useful in CD117- positive GISTs. The goal of this study is to investigate the expression of CD117 in glial tumo...