Brain and nerve = Shinkei kenkyū no shinpo
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Despite advances in radiation and chemotherapy along with surgical resectioning, the prognosis of patients with malignant glioma is poor. Therefore, the development of a new treatment modality is extremely important. There are increasing reports demonstrating that systemic immunotherapy using peptide is capable of inducing an antiglioma response. ⋯ Peptide-based immunotherapy strategies appear promising as an approach to successfully induce an antitumor immune response and increase survival in patients with glioma. Peptide-based therapy of glioma seems to be safe and without major side effects. Biotherapy for malignant glioma with peptide will open a novel reality now.
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Brain histamine is involved in a wide range of physiological functions such as regulation of sleep-wake cycle, arousal, appetite control, cognition, learning and memory mainly through the 4 receptor subtypes: H1, H2, H3 and H4. Neurons producing histamine, histaminergic neurons, are exclusively located in the tuberomammillary nucleus of the posterior hypothalamus and are transmitting histamine to almost all regions of the brain. Roles of brain histamine have been studied using animals including knock-out mice and human subjects. ⋯ Nowadays, H3 receptors have been thought to be a new target of drug treatment of various neuropsychiatric disorders. There are still many research topics to be investigated regarding molecular imaging of histamine and histamine receptors. The authors hope that this line of research contributes more for the promotion of QOL in patients and people in daily lives.