Papers by valeria cuccarini
Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
If conceptual retrieval is partially based on the simulation of sensorimotor experience, people w... more If conceptual retrieval is partially based on the simulation of sensorimotor experience, people with a different sensorimotor experience, such as congenitally blind people, should retrieve concepts in a different way. However, studies investigating the neural basis of several conceptual domains (e.g., actions, objects, places) showed a very limited impact of early visual deprivation. We approached this problem by investigating brain regions that encode the perceptual similarity of action and color concepts evoked by spoken words in sighted and congenitally blind people. At first, and in line with previous findings, a contrast between action and color concepts (independently of their perceptual similarity) revealed similar activations in sighted and blind people for action concepts and partially different activations for color concepts, but outside visual areas. On the other hand, adaptation analyses based on subjective ratings of perceptual similarity showed compelling differences a...
Journal of Clinical Oncology
Journal of Clinical Oncology
2065 Background: The MRI follow –up of patients affected by glioblastoma (GBM) and treated with i... more 2065 Background: The MRI follow –up of patients affected by glioblastoma (GBM) and treated with immunotherapy may be difficult, as immune responses may mimic tumor progression. To explore the potential contribution of quantitative MRI to the identification of patients with clinical benefit benefit, we used advanced MRI to study GBM patients treated with dendritic cell (DC) immunotherapy added to standard treatment (surgery, radiotherapy with concomitant temozolomide (TMZ) followed by adjuvant TMZ; DENDR1 trial, EUDRACT N° 2008-005035-15). Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed on longitudinal MRIs obtained soon after radiotherapy, within two days before the first vaccination (basal MRI) and every two months, in 22 patients enrolled in DENDR1. The following parameters were collected: tumor volume of contrast–enhanced lesions, mean rCBV, maximal rCBV, mean ADC, minimal ADC, ADC skewness. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine optimal sensitivity...
Journal of Clinical Oncology
Neuro-Oncology Advances
Background The efficacy of Dendritic Cell (DC) immunotherapy as a single therapeutic modality for... more Background The efficacy of Dendritic Cell (DC) immunotherapy as a single therapeutic modality for the treatment of glioblastoma (GBM) patients remains limited. In this study, we evaluated in patients with GBM recurrence the immune-mediated effects of DC loaded with autologous tumor lysate combined with temozolomide (TMZ) or tetanus toxoid (TT). Methods In the phase I-II clinical study DENDR2, twelve patients were treated with five DC vaccinations combined with dose-dense TMZ. Subsequently, in eight patients, here defined as Variant (V)-DENDR2, the vaccine site was preconditioned with TT 24 hours before DC vaccination and TMZ was avoided. As a survival endpoint for these studies we considered overall survival 9 months (OS9) after second surgery. Patients were analyzed for the generation of effector, memory, and T helper immune response. Results Four of twelve DENDR2 patients reached OS9, but all failed to show an immunological response. Five of eight V-DENDR2 patients (62%) reached O...
Journal of Neurosurgical Sciences
Journal of Clinical Oncology
Journal of Clinical Oncology
We investigated the experiential bases of knowledge by asking whether people that perceive the wo... more We investigated the experiential bases of knowledge by asking whether people that perceive the world in a different way also show a different neurobiology of concepts. We characterized the brain activity of early-blind and sighted individuals during a conceptual retrieval task in which participants rated the perceptual similarity between color and action concepts evoked by spoken words. Adaptation analysis showed that word-pairs referring to perceptually similar colors (e.g., red-orange) or actions (e.g., run-jump) led to repetition-suppression in occipital visual regions in the sighted, regions that are known to encode visual features of objects and events, independently of their category. Early blind showed instead adaptation for similar concepts in language-related regions, but not in occipital cortices. Further analysis contrasting the two categories (color and action), independently of item similarity, activated category-sensitive regions in the pMTG (for actions) and the precu...
Oncoimmunology, 2018
In a two-stage phase II study, 24 patients with first diagnosis of glioblastoma (GBM) were treate... more In a two-stage phase II study, 24 patients with first diagnosis of glioblastoma (GBM) were treated with dendritic cell (DC) immunotherapy associated to standard radiochemotherapy with temozolomide (TMZ) followed by adjuvant TMZ. Three intradermal injections of mature DC loaded with autologous GBM lysate were administered before adjuvant TMZ, while 4 injections were performed during adjuvant TMZ. According to a two-stage Simon design, to proceed to the second stage progression-free survival (PFS) 12 months after surgery was expected in at least 8 cases enrolled in the first stage. Evidence of immune response and interaction with chemotherapy were investigated. After a median follow up of 17.4 months, 9 patients reached PFS12. In these patients (responders, 37.5%), DC vaccination induced a significant, persistent activation of NK cells, whose increased response was significantly associated with prolonged survival. CD8 T cells underwent rapid expansion and priming but, after the first ...
Radiology, Jun 22, 2018
Purpose To evaluate the feasibility of a standardized protocol for acquisition and analysis of dy... more Purpose To evaluate the feasibility of a standardized protocol for acquisition and analysis of dynamic contrast material-enhanced (DCE) and dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in a multicenter clinical setting and to verify its accuracy in predicting glioma grade according to the new World Health Organization 2016 classification. Materials and Methods The local research ethics committees of all centers approved the study, and informed consent was obtained from patients. One hundred patients with glioma were prospectively examined at 3.0 T in seven centers that performed the same preoperative MR imaging protocol, including DCE and DSC sequences. Two independent readers identified the perfusion hotspots on maps of volume transfer constant (K), plasma (v) and extravascular-extracellular space (v) volumes, initial area under the concentration curve, and relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV). Differences in parameters between grades and molecular subtype...
Journal of Immunology Research
Pseudophenomena, that is, imaging alterations due to therapy rather than tumor evolution, have an... more Pseudophenomena, that is, imaging alterations due to therapy rather than tumor evolution, have an important impact on the management of glioma patients and the results of clinical trials. RANO (response assessment in neurooncology) criteria, including conventional MRI (cMRI), addressed the issues of pseudoprogression after radiotherapy and concomitant chemotherapy and pseudoresponse during antiangiogenic therapy of glioblastomas (GBM) and other gliomas. The development of cancer immunotherapy forced the identification of further relevant response criteria, summarized by the iRANO working group in 2015. In spite of this, the unequivocal definition of glioma progression by cMRI remains difficult particularly in the setting of immunotherapy approaches provided by checkpoint inhibitors and dendritic cells. Advanced MRI (aMRI) may in principle address this unmet clinical need. Here, we discuss the potential contribution of different aMRI techniques and their indications and pitfalls in r...
Journal of Neurological Surgery Part B: Skull Base, 2016
Brain Research, 2016
L-2-Hydroxyglutaric aciduria (L2HGA) is an extremely rare hereditary neurometabolic disease, char... more L-2-Hydroxyglutaric aciduria (L2HGA) is an extremely rare hereditary neurometabolic disease, characterized by increased L-2-hydroxyglutarate (L2HG) levels in the brain and biological fluids. 24-h urine 2HG level remains the biochemical hallmark for the diagnosis of L2HGA, whereas it is unknown the feasibility to measure in vivo the intracerebral levels of 2HG by using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). We used at 3T H(1)-MRS Single-Voxel (SV) PRESS sequences tailored to detect 2HG, in three adult patients with the diagnosis of L2HGA and in healthy controls. We also used mass spectrometric methods to measure the levels of 2HG in plasma and serum. 2HG peak was detected and quantified in the white matter (WM) of the three L2HGA patients, while it was absent in controls. All patients showed also high levels of 2HG in plasma and serum. Brain 2HG detected by MRS may play a role in the diagnosis and follow-up of L2HGA, besides circulating plasma/serum 2HG levels by mass spectrometric assays, although studies on a large cohort of patients are required to confirm these observations.
Archiv Fur Klinische Und Experimentelle Ohren Nasen Und Kehlkopfheilkunde, May 9, 2007
Journal of Neuro-Oncology, 2015
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Papers by valeria cuccarini