As the most dangerous tumors, brain tumors are usually treated with surgical removal, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. However, due to the aggressive growth of gliomas and their resistance to conventional chemoradiotherapy, it is difficult to cure brain tumors by conventional means. In addition, the higher dose requirement of chemotherapeutic drugs caused by the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and the untargeted nature of the drug inevitably leads to low efficacy and systemic toxicity of chemotherapy. In recent years, nanodrug carriers have attracted extensive attention because of their superior drug transport capacity and easy-to-control properties. This review systematically summarizes the major strategies of novel nano-drug delivery systems for the treatment of brain tumors in recent years that cross the BBB and enhance brain targeting, and compares the advantages and disadvantages of several strategies.

Background: Gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRHa) is the gold standard in the treatment of Central Precocious Puberty (CPP) with progressive puberty and accelerative growth. However, GnRHa treatment is reported to result in growth deceleration and prevents growth plate development which leads to a reduction in height velocity. Stanozolol (ST) has been used to stimulate growth in patients with delayed growth and puberty, nevertheless, the effects and mechanisms of ST on CPP with GnRHa treatment are currently unclear.Methods and Results: In the current study, we recorded the following vital observations that provided insights into ST induced chondrogenic differentiation and the maintenance of normal growth plate development: (1) ST efficiently prevented growth deceleration and maintained normal growth plate development in rats undergoing GnRHa treatment; (2) ST suppressed the inhibitory effect of GnRHa to promote chondrogenic differentiation; (3) ST induced chondrogenic differentiation through the activation of the JNK/c-Jun/Sox9 signaling pathway; (4) ST promoted chondrogenic differentiation and growth plate development through the JNK/Sox9 signaling pathway in vivo.Conclusions: ST mitigated the inhibitory effects of GnRHa and promoted growth plate development in rats. ST induced the differentiation of chondrocytes and maintained normal growth plate development through the activation of JNK/c-Jun/Sox9 signaling. These novel findings indicated that ST could be a potential agent for maintaining normal bone growth in cases of CPP undergoing GnRHa treatment.

Background: As reflected in the WHO classification of glioma since 2020, genomic information has been an important criterion in addition to histology for glioma classification. There is a significant intergrade difference as well as intragrade difference of survival probability among glioma patients. Except the molecular criteria used in the WHO classification, few studies have explored other genomic factors that may be underlying these survival differences, especially in Chinese populations. Here, we used integrative genomic approaches to characterize a Chinese glioma cohort to search for potential prognostic biomarkers.Methods: We recruited 46 Chinese patients with primary malignant glioma. All the patients were analyzed with whole-exome sequencing (WES) and 27 of them were analyzed with RNA-seq. We compared the molecular features between patients in different WHO grades. We classified the glioblastoma (GBM) patients into two groups (good vs poor survival) using six-month progression-free survival (PFS6) status and compared the genomic profiles between the two groups.Results: We found grade II and grade III patients cluster together (LGG) and they are different from GBM in unsupervised clustering analysis with RNA-seq data. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) comparing GBM and the LGG group suggested that GBM had upregulation of multiple pathways related to genome integrity and immune cell infiltration. Further comparison of somatic mutations between the two groups revealed TOPAZ1 as a novel mutation associated with GBM and prevalence of CNV in multiple genes in GBM. Comparison between PFS6 good and poor GBM patients revealed six genes (TRIML2, ROCK1, PKD1, OBSCN, HECTD4, and ADCY7) were significantly mutated and two genes (NTRK1 and B2M) had more CNV alterations in the poor prognosis group.Conclusion: Taken together, our molecular data revealed that GBM patient showed distinct characteristics related to individual gene, chromosome integrity, and infiltrating immune cells compared to LGG (grade II/III) patients. We also identified few novel genes with SNV or CNV, which might be the potential markers for clinical outcome of GBM.

Background: Rosai–Dorfman disease (RDD) is a rare, benign, idiopathic non-Langerhans cell histiocytosis. Cases of RDD in the CNS are extremely rare but lethal. RDD is thought to represent a reactive process. Recent studies proposed a subset of RDD cases that had a clonal nature. However, its clone origin is poorly understood. Case presentation: We present a rare case of RDD in the CNS with two isolated lesions. These two lesions were removed successively after two operations. No seizure nor recurrence appears to date (2 years follow-up). Morphological and immunohistochemical profiles of these two lesions support the diagnosis of RDD. Based on the whole-exome sequencing (WES) data, we found the larger lesion has a higher tumor mutational burden (TMB) and more driver gene mutations than the smaller lesion. We also found seven common truncal mutations in these two lesions, raising the possibility that they might stem from the same ancestor clone. Conclusions: Overall, this is the first report about clonal evolution of RDD in the CNS with two isolated lesions. Our findings contribute to the pathology of RDD, and support the notion that a subset of cases with RDD is a clonal histiocytic disorder driven by genetic alterations.