Endocrine Abstracts

The incretin hormone glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) has been proposed to increase beta cell mass, via effects on proliferation, apoptosis and neogenesis. However, the role of GLP-1 during normal human development is unclear. We have addressed this in human fetuses by quantifying GLP-1 secretion during fetal development and determining how GLP-1 signalling impacts on early human fetal pancreas in explant culture.GLP-1 is first secreted by the stomach, du...

Background: Lifelong surveillance should be offered to people with hereditary phaeochromocytoma and paraganglioma (PPGL), including asymptomatic carriers of pathogenic gene variants. Regular biochemical and radiological surveillance aims to improve disease detection and prognosis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, outpatient appointments were cancelled or postponed. Departments continue to face large backlogs of work. Clinicians in the USA reported 15% PPGL patients missing at lea...

Understanding how fate choices are made by multipotent progenitors during pancreas development is valuable information in the quest for regenerative medicine and cell therapy to treat diabetes mellitus. Pancreatic differentiation is well defined and understood in rodents however, human data are comparably scarce. Specifically, when human pancreatic progenitors are multipotent is unknown as are the epigenetic changes that these cells undergo during their differentiation to beta...