The drug already provides short-term benefits to people with ALS.

Intracranial hemorrhage can be a devastating complication associated with needle biopsies of the brain. Hemorrhage can occur to vessels located adjacent to the biopsy needle as tissue is aspirated into the needle and removed. No intraoperative technology exists to reliably identify blood vessels that are at risk of damage. To address this problem, we developed an “imaging needle” that can visualize nearby blood vessels in real time. The imaging needle contains a miniaturized optical coherence tomography probe that allows differentiation of blood flow and tissue. In 11 patients, we were able to intraoperatively detect blood vessels (diameter, 500 μm) with a sensitivity of 91.2% and a specificity of 97.7%. This is the first reported use of an optical coherence tomography needle probe in human brain in vivo. These results suggest that imaging needles may serve as a valuable tool in a range of neurosurgical needle interventions.

Stereotactic brain biopsies are a minimally invasive procedure used to obtain samples of intracranial tissue for diagnostic purposes, most commonly related to brain tumors. Approximately 80,000 new cases of primary brain tumor are diagnosed, and 14,000 brain biopsies are performed each year in the United States (1, 2). Hemorrhage is the most frequent and devastating complication associated with this procedure. Perioperative hemorrhage is associated with rates of transient and permanent morbidity of 1.7 to 8.5% and 1.4 to 4.8%, respectively, and mortality rates of 0.6 to 2.8% (3–7).

The standard clinical practice is to identify blood vessels at risk of injury on preoperative imaging, using either contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or x-ray computed tomography. Frameless stereotactic navigation techniques, guided by preoperative imaging, are then used to direct the biopsy needle trajectory to sample the target lesion, while avoiding vasculature or eloquent brain tissue (8).

Two Nature papers show that it is possible to make T cells that target some of the few neoantigens expressed by glioblastomas and that T- cell responses can be boosted in cancers. This News & Views discusses the findings.

Clinical trials reveal that personalized vaccines can boost immune-cell responses to brain tumours that don’t usually respond to immunotherapy. The findings also point to how to improve such treatments. Personalized vaccines boost immune responses targeting brain tumours.

In a new #Stanford study explaining the cellular mechanisms behind cognitive impairment from chemotherapy, scientists have demonstrated that a widely used chemotherapy drug, #methotrexate, causes a complex set of problems in three major cell types within the brain’s white matter. The study also identifies a potential remedy.

In a new study explaining the cellular mechanisms behind cognitive impairment from chemotherapy, scientists have demonstrated that a widely used chemotherapy drug, methotrexate, causes a complex set of problems in three major cell types within the brain’s white matter. The study also identifies a potential remedy.

A new study has discovered that patients with high blood pressure and abnormalities in the periventricular white matter in the brain showed signs of cognitive impairment despite taking medication to lower their blood pressure.

High blood pressure has been linked to an increased risk for dementia, but what’s unclear is what kinds of subtle negative changes take place in the brain that may affect cognitive function, according to researchers. Finding new ways to detect minor types of cognitive impairment may help determine who is at risk for early-stage dementia, they noted.

In the study, researchers looked at 345 men and women with a median age of 65 who had high blood pressure.