Endocrine Abstracts

The heterodimeric peptide hormone relaxin is involved in extracellular matrix turnover during development and lactational differentiation of the breast. Relaxin expression is increased in human breast cancer and serum relaxin levels in breast cancer patients were reported to correlate with metastatic disease. We have established relaxin over-expressing transfectants of the highly invasive estrogen receptor-negative human breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 (MDA/RLN) to investig...

The peptide growth factor relaxin (RLN) is expressed in human thyroid carcinoma cell lines and tissues. We have previously established thyroid carcinoma cell transfectants with over-expression of relaxin and demonstrated that relaxin increases cellular motility and in-vitro invasiveness in these transfectants. This increase in motility and migration is relaxin receptor (LGR7)-dependent. S100A4 (metastasin), a member of the S100 family of calcium binding proteins, is known to c...

AUF1/heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein D (hnRNPD) is an adenylate uridylate-rich elements (ARE) binding protein, which regulates the mRNA stability of many genes related to growth regulation, such as proto-oncogenes, growth factors, cytokines and cell cycle regulatory genes. Several studies demonstrated AUF1 expression in kidneys, liver, lymphoid tissues and melanocytes, and its involvement in apoptosis, tumorigenesis and development by its interactions with AREs bearing...