Endocrine Abstracts

We previously described aberrant expression of microRNAs belonging to the chromosome 19 cluster (C19MC) and the close miR-371-373 cluster in two-thirds of parathyroid carcinomas (PCas). Therefore, we investigated the involvement of the miR-371-373 cluster in parathyroid tumours, where miR-372 was the most consistently upregulated. miR-372 is known to be highly expressed in human embryonic stem cells and definitely downregulated upon differentiation. Moreover, miR-372 promotes ...

Though there is no evidence of a constitutive nuclear accumulation of β-catenin, the Wnt/β-catenin pathway might be deregulated in parathyroid tumours. We investigated unphosphorylated active β-catenin distribution by western blot in 16 typical parathyroid adenomas (PAds): β-catenin accumulation in the nuclear protein fractions varied from the levels detected in Caco-2 cells with constitutively active Wnt signalling (three PAds) to the levels measured in HE...

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Embryonic transcription factors have been involved in tumourigenesis. The transcription factor TBX1 regulates the embryonic parathyroid cells fate. Indeed, it has never been investigated in human adult parathyroids. Here, expression, function and regulation of the TBX1 gene were analyzed in adult normal and tumour parathyroid tissues. Immunohistochemistry identified 30–70% (mean±S.E.M, 52.0±7.3%) of cells expressing TBX1 at nuclear levels...

An embryonic gene signature has been suggested in parathyroid tumours. We investigated the expression of early embryonic stem cell (ESC) genes in parathyroid tumours. POU5F1/OCT4, SOX2 and NANOG transcripts were detected in almost all parathyroid adenomas (PAds; n=22) and atypical PAds (n=3), besides the variable expression of ESC genes KLF4, EGR1, and REX1/ZFP42. OCT4, SOX2 and NANOG proteins expression w...

Long noncoding RNAs (LncRNAs) are transcripts of more than 200 nucleotides not translated into proteins. They carry out diverse functions, including transcriptional regulation in cis or trans, organization of nuclear domains, and regulation of proteins or RNA molecules. Aberrant expression of LncRNAs has been reported in human cancers; indeed, data in parathyroid tumors are lacking. Based on the profiling through lncProfilersTM qPCR Array with SYBR...