Anaplastic astrocytoma (AA) and glioblastoma (GBM): a real-life experience in Padua Neuro-Oncology Center

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Mismatch-repair protein expression in high-grade gliomas: A large retrospective multicenter study

Background: DNA mismatch repair (MMR) is a system for repairing errors in DNA replication. Cancer cells with MMR deficiency can have immunohistochemical loss of MMR protein expression leading to a hypermutable phenotype that may correlate with anti-PD1 efficacy. Scant data exist about immunohistochemical loss of MMR protein expression in high-grade gliomas (HGG). Materials and Methods: We performed a large multicenter retrospective study to investigate the frequency and the prognostic role of immunohistochemical loss of MMR protein expression in HGG patients; we nevertheless evaluated the association between this status and clinical or molecular characteristics. Immunohistochemical loss of MMR protein expression was recorded as partial or complete loss of at least 1 MMR protein. Results: We analyzed the expression of MMR proteins in tumor tissue of 355 consecutive patients. Partial and complete immunohistochemical loss of MMR proteins was found in 43/355 samples (12.1%) and among these, 15 cases (4.2%) showed a complete loss of at the least one MMR protein. Alteration of MSH2 expression was found in 55.8%, MSH6 in 46.5%, PMS2 in 34.9%, and MLH1 in 30.2%. Alteration of MMR protein expression was statistically more frequent in anaplastic gliomas, in recurrent disease, in patients treated with temozolomide, and in IDH-mut gliomas. Immunohistochemical loss of MMR proteins was not associated with survival, adjusting for clinically relevant confounders. Conclusions: MMR protein expression status did not affect survival in HGG patients. We identified clinical and molecular characteristics correlating with immunohistochemical loss of MMR proteins expression. A large study should be performed to analyze its predictive role of immune checkpoint inhibitor efficacy in these subgroups of patients

‘Verdello’, ‘Verdicchio’ and ‘Verduschia’: an example of integrated multidisciplinary study to clarify grapevine cultivar identity

‘Verdello’, ‘Verdicchio’ and ‘Verduschia’ are registered in the official Italian Catalogue as three distinct grapevine varieties. Twenty-five accessions of these cultivars, encompassing known or presumed synonyms, coming from CRA repositories and from vineyards where they are traditionally cultivated, have been genotyped with eleven SSR markers. For morphological comparison, one accession for each variety has been described with 57 characters of OIV 2009 list; phenological and yield traits have also been recorded. In addition, the phenotypic comparison has been extended to the literature descriptions. The same DNA profile has been obtained for all 25 accessions; moreover, present and historical ampelographic data showed a very high similarity. All this information leads to the conclusion that these three varieties are, in fact, the same cultivar

Sustainability of grape-ethanol energy chain

The aim of this work is to evaluate the sustainability, in terms of greenhouse gases emission saving, of a new potential bio-ethanol production chain in comparison with the most common ones. The innovation consists of producing bio-ethanol from different types of no-food grapes, while usually bio-ethanol is obtained from matrices taken away from crop for food destination: sugar cane, corn, wheat, sugar beet. In the past, breeding programs were conducted with the aim of improving grapevine characteristics, a large number of hybrid vine varieties were produced and are nowadays present in the Viticulture Research Centre (CRA-VIT) Germplasm Collection. Some of them are potentially interesting for bio-energy production because of their high production of sugar, good resistance to diseases, and ability to grow in marginal lands. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of grape ethanol energy chain was performed following two different methods: i) using the spreadsheet BioGrace, developed within the Intelligent Energy Europe program to support and to ease the Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC implementation; ii) using a dedicated LCA software. Emissions were expressed in CO2 equivalent (CO2eq). These two tools gave very similar results. The overall emissions impact of ethanol production from grapes on average is about 33 g CO2eq MJ–1 of ethanol if prunings are used for steam production and 53 g CO2eq MJ–1 of ethanol if methane is used. The comparison with other bio-energy chains points out that the production of ethanol using grapes represents an intermediate situation in terms of general emissions among the different production chains. The results showed that the sustainability limits provided by the normative are respected to this day. On the contrary, from 2017 this production will be sustainable only if the transformation processes will be performed using renewable sources of energy

The European Vitis Database (www.eu-vitis.de) – a technical innovation through an online uploading and interactive modification system

The objective of the European Vitis Database is to safeguard and enhance germplasm by monitoring its preservation. Two issues are strongly related to that purpose: (1) participation of collections covering almost all grape biodiversity and (2) assessment of accessions trueness to type. In the scope of the European project GrapeGen06 efforts have been made towards both objectives. The 35 participating grape germplasm repositories are found between the Iberian Peninsula and Transcaucasia, thus covering a broad range of grape diversity. Altogether they maintain 32,410 accessions. However with respect to biodiversity, gaps are still evident and further collections need to be included and trueness to type assessment absolutely needs to be pursued to organize duplication of endangered genotypes. Within the GrapeGen06 project focus was laid on the establishment of a database conferring the collection holders a high degree of responsibility and independence. Hence for the first time in a European Central Crop Database an on-line uploading application and an interactive modification system for data administration was implemented. These innovations disburden the database manager and offer the curators of collections more flexibility. Prerequisites for data import, descriptors applied, access levels, database contents, uploading, export and search functions are described