Clinical Efficacy of Temozolomide and Its Predictors in Aggressive Pituitary Tumors and Pituitary Carcinomas: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: A growing number of evidences suggest that TMZ applications can generate impressive benefits for APT and PC patients. However, the definite role of TMZ for individuals remains unclarified due to the variation between studies. And the predictive factors to alter its efficacy remain debatable.Objective: To evaluate the long-term effectiveness and safety profile of TMZ in the treatment of pituitary malignancies, and delineate the predictors during its clinical employment.Results: A literature retrieval was conducted from online databases for studies published up to December 31, 2020. Twenty one studies involving 429 patients were identified. TMZ exhibited 41% radiological overall response rate (rORR). The biochemical response rate was determinate in 53% of the functioning subset. Two-year and 4-year survival rate were 79 and 61%, respectively. TMZ prolonged the median PFS and OS as 20.18 and 40.24 months. TMZ-related adverse events occurred in 19% of patients. Regarding predictors of TMZ response, rORR was dramatically improved in patients with low/intermediate MGMT expression than those with high-MGMT (>50%) (p < 0.001). The benefit of TMZ varied according to functioning subtype of patients, with greater antitumor activities in functioning subgroups and fewer activities in non-functioning sets (p < 0.001). Notably, the concomitant therapy of radiotherapy and TMZ significantly increased the rORR (p = 0.007).Conclusion: TMZ elicits clinical benefits with moderate adverse events in APT and PC patients. MGMT expression and clinical subtype of secreting function might be vital predictors of TMZ efficacy. In the future, the combination of radiotherapy with TMZ may further improve the clinical outcomes than TMZ monotherapy

Neuroimaging with light field microscopy: a mini review of imaging systems

Light-field microscopy is an emerging technique that allows fast-speed volumetric imaging of the sample at microscale resolution. In the past years, the parallel development of light-field microscopy and genetically encoded calcium sensors has enabled a variety of fast-speed and large-scale neuroimaging at high resolution and sensitivity. These neuroimaging techniques have greatly enhanced our understanding of the mechanism under brain function and expedited our steps of decoding brain patterns. This review provides an overview of different versions of light-field microscopy used in neural imaging, and also offers a historic development outline of genetically encoded calcium sensors. Following that, the review intensively discussed light-field imaging of zebrafish neural activity. In the last section, we summarized the review and also envisioned the future of volumetric neuroimaging