Endocrine Abstracts

The pituitary gland is a critical endocrine organ regulating multiple essential physiological processes including growth, reproduction, metabolism and the stress response. Hormone-producing pituitary cell lineages are derived from a population of embryonic precursors expressing the transcription factor SOX2. These cells maintain multipotency into early postnatal life, acting as the resident population of pituitary stem cells (PSCs) and contributing to all the endocrine cell li...

Pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas (PPGLs) are rare neuroendocrine tumours, which arise from neural crest (NC)-derived structures: the adrenal medulla and the paraganglia. Around one third of PPGLs are associated with inherited cancer susceptibility genes, the highest rate among all tumour types. Currently, the only diagnostic criterion for malignant disease is the presence of metastasis and no molecular or histological features have been identified that help predict risk. A...

The pituitary gland is a dynamic organ that adapts its cellular architecture throughout life, making it an ideal model for the study of stem cells (SCs), their commitment and differentiation. Sox2-expressing cells are bona fide anterior pituitary stem cells (PSCs), which through genetic lineage tracing have been shown to give rise to all anterior pituitary hormone-producing cells both in the embryo and adult. The YAP/TAZ signalling pathway has been previously...