Endocrine Abstracts

The FGF signalling pathway regulates cell proliferation, differentiation, migration and cell specification in mutliple developing and adult tissues. It has also been implicated in tumor development and progression with a significant role in the cancer pathobiology of several malignant tumors including melanoma, breast, pancreas, head and neck and non-small lung cell cancer. FGF signalling plays a major role in the postnatal hypothalamic-pituitary (HP) axis, with dysregulation ...

Somatic stem cells of multiple tissues such as brain, blood, gut epithelium and epidermis, have specific roles in tissue homeostasis and plasticity of cell types. There is evidence that when mutated, such cells, termed cancer stem cells (CSCs) also underlie tumorigenesis, but their presence in many tumours is elusive. In the pituitary gland, somatic stem cells (PSCs) have been previously identified and characterised but little is known about their role in tumorigenesis. Adaman...

A tightly regulated stress system is pivotal for health and the adrenal cortex is a master regulator of the endocrine stress response. The adrenal cortex is characterized by constant cell renewal in part mediated by differentiation and lineage conversion of undifferentiated cell types. To date, the contribution of stem cells to organ plasticity during stress has been implicated but is not fully understood. Recently, we were able to show that a prolonged stress exposure leads t...

The anterior pituitary gland is a critical endocrine organ responsible for many important physiological processes including puberty, fertility, metabolism and the stress response. It is derived from, and maintained by, a population of SOX2+ progenitor/stem cells which become more quiescent with age until their direct contribution to tissue turnover becomes negligible. Previous research has demonstrated that the postnatal SOX2+ population exhibits heterogeneity in terms of mark...

The pituitary gland is a critical endocrine organ regulating multiple essential physiological processes including growth, reproduction, metabolism and the stress response. Hormone-producing pituitary cell lineages are derived from a population of embryonic precursors expressing the transcription factor SOX2. These cells maintain multipotency into early postnatal life, acting as the resident population of pituitary stem cells (PSCs) and contributing to all the endocrine cell li...

Pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas (PPGLs) are rare neuroendocrine tumours, which arise from neural crest (NC)-derived structures: the adrenal medulla and the paraganglia. Around one third of PPGLs are associated with inherited cancer susceptibility genes, the highest rate among all tumour types. Currently, the only diagnostic criterion for malignant disease is the presence of metastasis and no molecular or histological features have been identified that help predict risk. A...

The pituitary gland is a dynamic organ that adapts its cellular architecture throughout life, making it an ideal model for the study of stem cells (SCs), their commitment and differentiation. Sox2-expressing cells are bona fide anterior pituitary stem cells (PSCs), which through genetic lineage tracing have been shown to give rise to all anterior pituitary hormone-producing cells both in the embryo and adult. The YAP/TAZ signalling pathway has been previously...

Background: SOX2 is an early developmental transcription factor implicated in pituitary development. It consists of a N-terminal domain, a high mobility group (HMG)-DNA binding domain and a carboxyl-terminal domain. Heterozygous SOX2 mutations have been described in patients with a severe ocular phenotype and hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism (HH) with/without associated abnormalities. In vitro SOX2 interacts with β-catenin, a member of the Wnt signalling pathway, and...