Meningiomas are the most common primary intracranial tumor. Important advances are occurring in meningioma research. These are expected to accelerate, potentially leading to impactful changes on the management of meningiomas in the near and medium term. This review will cover the histo- and molecular pathology of meningiomas, including recent 2016 updates to the WHO classification of CNS tumors. We will discuss clinical and radiographic presentation and therapeutic management. Surgery and radiotherapy, the two longstanding primary therapeutic modalities, will be discussed at length. In addition, data from prior and ongoing investigations of other treatment modalities, including systemic and targeted therapies, will be covered. This review will quickly update the reader on the contemporary management and future directions in meningiomas. [Formula: see text].

The mammalian E2F family of transcription factors plays a crucial role in the regulation of cellular proliferation, apoptosis, and differentiation. Consistent with its biological role in a number of important cellular processes, E2F regulates the expression of genes involved in cell cycle, DNA replication, DNA repair, and mitosis. It has proven difficult, however, to determine the specific roles played by the various known family members in these cellular processes. The work presented here now extends the complexity of this family even further by the identification of a novel E2F family member, which we now term E2F7. Like the expression of the known E2F activators, E2F1, E2F2, and E2F3, the expression of E2F7 is growth-regulated, at least in part, through E2F binding elements on its promoter, and its protein product is localized to the nucleus and associates with DNA E2F recognition sites with high affinity. A number of salient features, however, make this member unique among the E2F family. First, the E2F7 gene encodes a protein that possesses two distinct DNA-binding domains and that lacks a dimerization domain as well as a transcriptional activation and a retinoblastoma-binding domain. In contrast to the E2F activators, E2F7 can block the E2F-dependent activation of a subset of E2F target genes as well as mitigate cellular proliferation of mouse embryo fibroblasts. These findings identify E2F7 as a novel member of the mammalian E2F transcription factor family that has properties of a transcriptional repressor capable of negatively influencing cellular proliferation.

The field of cancer immunotherapy has made exciting progress for some cancer types in recent years. However, recent failures of late-phase clinical trials evaluating checkpoint blockade in patients with glioblastoma (GBM) represent continued challenges for brain cancer immunotherapy. This is likely due to multiple factors including but not limited to marked genetic and antigenic heterogeneity, relatively low mutational loads, and paucity of GBM-infiltrating T cells. We review recent and ongoing studies targeting the checkpoint molecules as monotherapy or in combination with other modalities, and discuss the mechanisms underlying the unresponsiveness of GBM to single-modality immunotherapy approaches. We also discuss other novel immunotherapy approaches that may promote T-cell responses and overcome the "cold tumor" status of GBM, including oncolytic viruses and adoptive T-cell therapy. .