Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Rats carrying a germline loss-of-function mutation in p27 (MENX syndrome) develop bilateral pheochromcoytoma (PCC) with complete penetrance. Gene expression profiling of rat PCCs identified genes highly expressed in tumors vs normal adrenal medulla. Several of them were found up-regulated also in human PCCs (both sporadic and familial), including the BMP7 gene encoding a member of the bone morphogenic protein family. BMP7 has been shown to be involved in other hu...