Endocrine Abstracts

Constitutive neurogenesis in the adult mammalian brain (sub-ventricular zone, SVZ and dentate gyrus) implies the capacity for self-repair following brain injury. However, brain injury is usually permanently debilitating as neuronal self-repair responses are not sustained and resident neural stem cells (NSC) do not repopulate damaged tissue. Identification of NSC differentiating factors transiently activated post-injury will be key to enhancing NSC mobilisation and differentiat...

Nodular thyroid disease is common and its pathogenesis remains poorly understood. Previously, we showed that thyroid-targeted overexpression of the proto-oncogene PTTG-Binding Factor (PBF) induced striking thyroid gland enlargement in transgenic mice (PBF-Tg)1. We have now investigated whether dietary factors influence goitrogenesis and the development of hyperplastic lesions in PBF-Tg mice. The mean weight of thyroids (5.8±0.9 mg; n=70) from 7 week old ...

PTTG binding factor (PBF) is a poorly characterised transforming gene that is overexpressed in thyroid tumours and inhibits the activity of the sodium iodide symporter (NIS) in vitro. Our recent investigations demonstrated that PBF mRNA expression was 2.6-fold higher in thyroid tissue excised from patients with multinodular goitres (MNG) than in normal thyroid tissue (n=25, P<0.01). We have now generated a murine transgenic model of targeted overexpres...

Previously we showed that thyroid-targeted overexpression of the PTTG binding factor (PBF) induced significant goitrogenesis in transgenic mice (PBF-Tg). In 10 week old PBF-Tg mice thyroid weight was increased by 1.8±0.3-fold compared to wild-type (WT) controls (n=20, P<0.0001). We have now examined the long-term effects of PBF overexpression on thyroid gland weight and histology in aged PBF-Tg mice. Our study shows that the penetrance of increased thyro...