Endocrine Abstracts

Prokineticins (Prok1 and Prok2) are chemokine-like peptides, which regulate through two G-protein-coupled receptors, ProkR1 and ProkR2, different physiological and pathological functions. Prok1 plays a significant role in tumour development and progression in several tissues. There are few data on the involvement of Prok1 and ProkR1 in testicular cancer. Aim of this study was to evaluate the expression of Prok1 and ProkR1 in a series of testicular germ cell tumours (GCT).<...

PATZ1 is a recently discovered zinc finger protein that, due to the presence of the POZ domain, acts as a transcriptional repressor affecting the basal activity of different promoters, and associates with a variety of transcription factors (i.e. RNF4, HMGA1, gscl, SPBP). We have previously described, by using mice lacking the PATZ1 gene, its crucial role in spermatogenesis. Consistently, PATZ1-KO mice are unfertile and testes from these mice showed only few spermatocyte...

Background: Vitamin D is an important modulator of cell growth, differentiation and death in normal and neoplastic cells. Its actions are mediated by vitamin D receptor (VDR), which heterodimerizes with nuclear retinoid X receptors (RXRα). Recently, it has been suggested that vitamin D system have a role in male reproduction. The aim of this study was to investigate the VDR and RXRα localization in normal and neoplastic human male reproductive tissues.<p class="a...