Endocrine Abstracts

: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNETs) are rare neoplasms arising from the endocrine pancreas. The fist line treatment is surgery that is often not curative in the presence of metastatic disease. Therefore, there is an increasing need for medical therapy. Sunitinib is a multi-target receptor tyrosine-kinase (RTK) inhibitor, described as having as main target VEGF receptor, with antitumor and antiangiogenic effects, approved for pNETs medical treatment. This study is aimed...

Finding new preclinical models to study the effects of anticancer drugs is one of the aims of biomedical research. Indeed, testing different in vitro systems can lead to a better understanding of the molecular pathways regulating tumor development and growth, and help to find new therapeutic approaches. This is crucial especially in the settings of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNET), where one of the main drugs approved for medical treatment is Sunitinib, a mult...

Introduction: It is known that growth hormone (GH) may influence neoplastic development of endometrial epithelium. GH is produced by normal and neoplastic endometrial cells and elevated levels have been observed in endometrial epithelium of patients with endometriosis and endometrial adenocarcinoma (EA). Moreover, endometrium cancer is one of the most occurring tumors in acromegalic patients. Furthermore, autocrine GH increases the oncogenicity of EA cells and is considered fu...

Acromegaly results from excess growth hormone (GH) secretion, due to a pituitary adenoma. Surgery is the first option recommended for treatment of GH secreting pituitary adenomas; medical therapy, mostly represented by somatostatin analogues (SSA), is most often used if surgery is not successful. Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1) physiologically reduces GH levels through an endocrine negative feedback loop. IGF-1 exerts its effects also through PI3K/Akt/mTO...

Introduction: Medical therapy of Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (P-NETs) may take advantage from mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors. However, so far, the extent of therapeutic response cannot be predicted.Aim: To investigate the possible predictors of sensitivity to mTOR inhibitors in P-NETs.Materials and methods: P-NET primary cultures were treated with IGF1 and/or Everolimus. Cell viability and caspase activity wer...

Surgery is not feasible for infiltrating and metastatic bronchopulmonary NET (BP-NET). In those cases, medical therapy is tried with controversial results. Thus, it is important to identify new therapeutic targets to provide adequate medical treatment for patients with BP-NET. Sunitinib, is a multi-targeted receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), mainly described to inhibit VEGFR.The aim of our study is to verify whether insulin receptor (IR), IGF1R, a...

Adrenocortical cancer (ACC) is a rare and aggressive malignancy. Currently the main therapeutic option is surgery, but due to difficult and delayed diagnosis and to the onset of metastases, medical therapy is often tried. ACC treatment is mainly represented by Mitotane alone or in association with chemotherapy, with variable results. Understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate ACC proliferation could be useful to identify new therapeutic options. Sunitinib, a multitar...

Background: Bronchial carcinoids (BC) are rare neoplasm, still orphan of medical therapy, which arise from neuroendocrine cells. It has been previously demonstrated that the atypical BC human cell line NCI-H720 is sensitive to everolimus (E), an m-TOR inhibitor, in terms of cell viability reduction, with a G0 cell-cycle arrest and a Cyclin D1 protein reduction. On the contrary, the typical human BC cell line NCI-H727 is not sensitive to E, despite the Cyclin D1 reduction. The ...

Background: Gigantism and acromegaly are the main consequences of GH excess, mainly due to a pituitary adenoma. Surgery is the first therapeutic option, but also medical therapy is employed, being mostly represented by somatostatin analogues (SSA), that reduce both tumour mass and GH hypersecretion. However about 10% of patients is resistant to SSA.PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway, activated by growth-factors such as IGF1, is important in regulating many cellular p...

Introduction: Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) are heterogeneous neoplasms arising from neuroendocrine cells spread in the respiratory and gastro-entero-pancreatic epithelium. The role of transforming growth factor beta-1 (TGFβ1) in NET biology is largely unknown. TGFβ1 signalling pathway is tumour suppressive in most non-transformed epithelial cell lines. In contrast, many human carcinomas are refractory to the growth–inhibitory effects of TGFβ1.<p class=...