Endocrine Abstracts

Over the last several years, we have generated low molecular weight (LMW) antagonists of the TSH receptor (TSHR) that have the potential to be developed as drugs to treat patients with Graves’ hyperthyroidism (GD)/Graves’ ophthalmopathy (GO) and thyroid cancer. As GD is caused by persistent, unregulated activation of TSHRs by thyroid-stimulating antibodies (TSAbs) on thyrocytes and GO may be caused by activation of TSHRs on retro-orbital fibroblasts, a LMW TSHR antag...

TSH activates the TSH receptor (TSHR) thereby stimulating the function of thyroid follicular cells (thyrocytes) leading to biosynthesis and secretion of thyroid hormones. Because TSHR is involved in several thyroid pathologies there is a strong rationale for the design of small molecule ‘drug-like’ ligands (SMLs).rhTSH (ThyrogenR) has been used in the follow-up of patients with thyroid cancer to increase the sensitivity for detection...