Endocrine Abstracts

cAMP is implicated in the regulation of a variety of cell functions that are related to activation of multiple intracellular pathways. In addition to the control of differentiated functions, such as hormone secretion, cAMP inhibits or stimulates cell proliferation depending on the cell type. In particular, consistent with the frequent expression of somatic mutations constitutively activating Gs alpha subunit (gsp oncogene) in GH-secreting adenomas, the activation of cAMP depen...

Anna Spada is currently Full Professor at the School of Medice, University of Milan. Her main research interests are on signal transduction in pituitary cells, pathogenesis of pituitary tumors, genotype/phenotype relationships in acromegalic patients with gsp mutations, tissue specific GNAS1 gene imprinting, molecular mechanisms of resistance to hormone action, activating and inactivating mutations of GNAS1 in endocrine disorders, polymorphic variants of somatostatin receptor ...

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a very common complication of cirrhosis (prevalence: 20–60%), primary due to increased hepatic insulin-resistance (IR). After liver transplantation (LT), DM recovers in 67% of cases, while 33% of patients remain diabetic because of a concomitant decreased beta cell function. The roles played by pre-transplant factors determining changes in glucose tolerance after LT are imperfectly known.Aim of the study: To h...

Neurosurgery is the treatment of choice of non-functioning pituitary tumors (NFPAs), but its success is strongly affected by local invasion. Medical therapy is still under debate, although the use of cabergoline results in tumor shrinkage in a subset of patients. We recently demonstrated that dopamine receptor DRD2 agonist BIM53097 exerts cytostatic and cytotoxic effects in cultured cells from NFPAs, but no data are present in literature about DRD2 mediated effects on pituitar...

Metformin (1.1-dimethylbiguanide hydrochloride), a widely used antidiabetic drug, has been reported to display potent anticancer properties in various types of cancers, including neuroendocrine tumors. Recently, a potential synergistic activity between metformin and octreotide (SSA) in Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors (P-NETs) has been proposed. AIP (aryl hydrocarbon receptor-interacting protein) acts as tumor suppressor gene in neuroendocrine tumors at pituitary level and it ...

Non-functioning pituitary tumors (NFPTs), although benign in nature, frequently present local invasiveness that strongly reduces neurosurgery success. Medical therapy is still under debate, although dopamine (DA) receptor 2 (DRD2) agonists may induce tumor shrinkage in some patients. Aims of this study were: 1) to evaluate the effect of DR2D agonist BIM53097 on migration and invasion of NFPT cells, 2) to investigate the molecular mechanisms regulating the motility of these cel...

Introduction: The classical replacement therapy for hypoadrenalism may expose patients to non-physiologic glucocorticoids levels with negative metabolic consequences. Up to now, one study demonstrated that, as compared to the classical treatment, a modified-release hydrocortisone (MRH), improves weight, blood pressure, glycaemic control and QoL in a 3-month follow-up period. Few data are available on the long-term persistence of these benefits.Design/met...

Somatostatin exerts its inhibitory effects on hormone secretion and cell proliferation via five receptors subtypes (SST1-SST5). After agonist binding, receptor residues mainly located in the carboxyl terminal (CT) and in the third intracellular loop (IC3) are phosphorylated and β-arrestins are recruited to drive SSTRs internalization.Aim of the study is to characterize the intracellular mechanisms responsible for SST2 internalization and identify th...

Several studies support the existence of multipotent stem/progenitor cells in the adult pituitary, whereas the presence of stem cell in pituitary tumors and their role in pituitary tumorigenesis are still on debate. Aim of this study was to identify and characterize stem-like cells in non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFPAs). To this purpose primary cell cultures from 25 NFPAs were grown in culture conditions that favored stem cell growth (EGF, bFGF and B27 containing medium...

The term pseudohypoparathyroidism (PHP) defines a heterogeneous group of rare, related and deeply impairing metabolic diseases due to end-organ resistance to the actions of PTH, associated to molecular defects at the GNAS locus. Different subtypes of PHP have been described based on the existence of additional clinical features, such as resistance to other hormones acting via GPCRs and Albright’s hereditary osteodystrophy (AHO). Recently, the detection in a small subset o...