Endocrine Abstracts

Steroids present in human serum can be used to identify a number of conditions such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia, Addison’s disease and Cushing’s disorder. Historically this has been completed using immunoassays; currently there is a move towards mass spectrometry which reduces analysis time, cross reactivity and improves sensitivity. When mass spectrometers are coupled with liquid chromatography systems (LC–MS) it is possible to monitor a number of steroid...

Introduction: Prostate cancer is hormone dependent and regulated by a balance of androgens as well as estrogens. Regulatory control is also exerted by the tumor microenvironment including cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), and immune cells. Although patient derived xenografts (PDX) commonly used to study the functional effects of CAFs, the method is not quantitative, is lengthy, technically challenging and the xenografts are placed in immune suppressed hosts excluding immun...