Endocrine Abstracts

Several studies support the existence of multipotent stem/progenitor cells in the adult pituitary, whereas the presence of stem cell in pituitary tumors and their role in pituitary tumorigenesis are still on debate. Aim of this study was to identify and characterize stem-like cells in non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFPAs). To this purpose primary cell cultures from 25 NFPAs were grown in culture conditions that favored stem cell growth (EGF, bFGF and B27 containing medium...

The embryonic transcription factor TBX1 plays a critical role in cell differentiation during organogenesis of the parathyroid glands. Here we demonstrated that TBX1 mRNA and protein were detected in human adult normal parathyroid tissues (n=3). Immunostaining showed that TBX1 protein was expressed in endothelial CD31+, alfa-SMA+ cells. By contrast, TBX1 mRNA and protein was expressed at higher levels in parathyroid typical adenomas (n=23), where TBX1 staining was...