Endocrine Abstracts

Non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFPA) are the most common pituitary tumours. They usually come to medical attention because of a mass effect and/or hypopituitarism. Tumour shrinkage during therapy with either dopamine agonists (DA) or somatostatin analogues (SSA) has been previously reported in some cases; however, response of NFPA to medical treatment is still poor and unpredictable. Our aim was to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying this lack of efficacy through ...

Gliomas are a common tumor type that affects the glial cells with common features of malignant tumors such as aggressive invasiveness, malignant transformation and vascular proliferation through the central nervous system. Currently, standard therapeutic strategies to treat malignant gliomas are not efficient having alow-rate survival (~12 months). Hence, there is a clear necessity for the identification of novel diagnostic/prognostic tools and therapeutic strategies to m...

Pharmacologic treatment of acromegaly is currently based upon assay-error strategy in which first generation somatostatin analogs (SSA) is the first-line treatment. However, about 50% of patients do no respond adequately to SSA. We aimed to evaluate the potential usefulness of including studies of molecular markers identifying poor response to SSA for prescription of pharmacologic treatment in acromegalic patients in which SSA was prescribed before surgical therapy.<p clas...

Since the first somatostatin receptor ligand (SRL) was used to treat acromegaly, predicting which patients could benefit from their use has become crucial to avoid months of ineffective treatment for non-responding patients. Although many biomarkers linked to SRL response have been identified, there is no consensus criterion on how to prescribe according to biomarker levels. In this study, we evaluate previously reported biomarkers using more exhaustive and accurate methods th...