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Background and purposeLower-grade gliomas (LGG) exhibit a wide range of metabolic pathway changes, and metabolic reprogramming can be largely seen as a result of oncogenic driving events. Glycolysis, an important pathway of tumor energy source, has been poorly studied in gliomas. The aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between glycolysis and lower-grade glioma development and prognosis in order to explore the heterogeneous relevance of glycolysis in lower-grade gliomas.Methods and resultsOur study searched the TCGA database and identified three glycolytic subtypes with significant prognostic differences by unsupervised clustering analysis of core glycolytic genes, named C1, C2, and C3. By analysis of clinical prognosis, somatic cell variation, and immune infiltration, we found that C3 had the best prognosis with molecular features of IDHmut-codel, followed by C1 with major molecular features of IDHmut-non-codel, G -CIMP high subtype, while C2 had the worst prognosis, mainly exhibiting IDHwt, G-CIMP low and mesenchymal-like subtypes with seven important CNV features, including CDKN2A/B deletion, chr7 gain and chr10 deletion, chr19/20 co-gain, EGFR amplification and PDGFRA/B deletion phenotypes were significantly increased, with the highest level of stemness and significant T-cell depletion features. Finally, to quantify the level of abnormal glycolysis and its impact on prognosis, we developed GlySig to reflect the glycolytic activity of LGG and integrated molecular features to construct nomogram that can be independently assessed to predict prognosis.ConclusionsOur study analyzed the tumor characteristics of different glycolytic states, and our findings explain and describe the heterogeneity of glycolytic metabolism within diffuse LGGs.

Mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) are adult stem cells that were originally isolated from bone marrow. In contrast to long bone-derived MSCs that have been extensively characterized, our knowledge regarding to MSCs isolated from flat bones (e.g., cranial bones) remain less clear. In this study, MSCs were purified from human cranial bone marrow (CB-MSCs) and their transdifferentiation capacity and immunomodulatory functions were further characterized. Phenotypic analysis of CB-MSCs demonstrated high expression of CD73, CD90, and CD105 while negative for CD14, CD34, and HLA-DR. Further in vitro differentiation assay shown that CB-MSCs capable of differentiating into cell types of mesenchymal origin (i.e., adipocytes, osetoblasts, and chondrocytes) and collectively, these results indicated that cells isolated from cranial bone marrow in this study are bona fide MSCs according to the minimal criteria proposed by the International Society for Cellular Therapy. Following in vitro expansion, single colony-derived CB-MSCs (scCB-MSCs) were obtained and confocal microscopy analysis further revealed functional heterogeneity within primary CB-MSCs. Specifically, obtained scCB-MSCs exhibited GABA progenitor features, as determined by olig2 and nestin. As expect, scCB-MSCs were readily induced to differentiate into GABAergic neuron-like cells. Furthermore, immunomodulatory roles of scCB-MSCs were evaluated following co-culture with human peripheral blood lymphocytes and results shown that co-culturing with scCB-MSCs significantly suppressed lymphocyte proliferation and promoted differentiation of lymphocytes into regulatory T cells but not Th1/Th17 phenotype. Overall, our results indicated that CB-MSCs exhibited clonal heterogeneity with marked propensity to differentiate into neural-like cells and this might represent promising candidates for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Background: Adult sellar region atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumor (AT/RT) is a rare lesion. We aimed to elucidate clinical, radiologic, and pathological characteristics, treatment strategies, and outcomes of this disease.Methods: Five adult sellar AT/RT patients were retrospectively analyzed between January 2015 and December 2018. In addition, we performed a review of the reported data on adult sellar AT/RT.Results: Patients (n = 5) were female with a median age of 50 years. The mean duration of symptoms, of which headache was the most frequent, was 1.6 months (range, 2 weeks−8 months). The average tumor size was 2.82 cm (range, 1.9–4.5 cm). All lesions were irregularly shaped. MRI showed heterogeneous enhancement in three of five lesions. Four of five patients underwent subtotal resection (STR) and one gross total resection (GTR). Whereas, one patient received post-operative adjuvant radiotherapy, one patient received post-operative combination of radio- and chemotherapy. The review of the reported data showed that 39 cases of adult sellar AT/RT had been reported. The estimated median overall survival (OS) was 23 months with a 1-year survival estimate of 59.7%. The median OS for patients with GTR was 28 months and 17 months for patients with STR. Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that patients with high (≥35%) MIB-1/Ki67 index value had a significantly shorter OS compared with those with low (