Endocrine Abstracts

Acromegaly is caused by excessive growth hormone (GH) secretion frequently due to GH-secreting pituitary tumors. Acromegalic tumors (ACRO) display reduced microvascular density versus normal pituitaries, suggesting they are under hypoxic conditions. Under hypoxia, tumors gain a survival advantage by stabilizing the transcription factor known as hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF1a). Western blot screening of ACRO (n=40) revealed significantly higher HIF1a protein l...

Somatostatin analogues (SSA) are the mainstay of pituitary-targeted pharmacological treatment in acromegaly, but are characterized by high incidence of resistance in half of cases. The successful management of acromegaly involves in addition to targeting biochemical control the treatment of the metabolic comorbidities and hypopituitarism. In this study we analysed the impact of the concomitant antidiabetic treatment and hormone replacement on the response to SSA. Data were col...

The factors triggering pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (PanNET) progression are largely unknown. Here we investigated the role and mechanisms of the sumoylation enhancing protein RSUME in PanNET tumorigenesis. Immunohistochemical studies showed that RSUME is strongly expressed in normal human pancreas, in particular in β-cells. RSUME expression is reduced in insulinomas and is nearly absent in other types of PanNETs suggesting a role in PanNET tumorigenesis. In human panc...