Endocrine Abstracts

Chronic stress is a pervasive concern in the modern society. A long-term hyper activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis leads to elevated amounts of stress hormones [e.g. ACTH and glucocorticoids (GCs)]. This can incur maladaptation that eventually contributes to mental illness, cardiovascular dysfunctions, diabetes, cancer and autoimmune diseases. Emerging key players for stress adaptation of the HPA axis are stem/progenitor cell populations. In this study,...

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...