Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Neuroendocrine tumors (NET) are heterogenous tumors with variable survival and the frequently occurring ability to metastasize. A basis for metastasis of tumors is invasive growth. One factor participating in this process is the existence of the so called ‘circulating tumor cells’ (CTC) in the peripheral blood. Up to now there is only rare data available regarding the number of CTCs in NET patients.Methods: EpCAM protein expressio...

Most recently, a completely new subset of NK cells with immunosuppressive functions has been identified. These cells are able to downregulate conventional NK cells in a PD1-ligand dependent manner and are, therefore, responsible for tumor outgrowth.The aim of our present study was to investigate the role of this new NK subset in autoimmunity. For this purpose, we used two independent mouse models. In the NOD mice, we found a large increase of suppressive...