Endocrine Abstracts

IGF1 represents an important growth factor in pituitary physiology and pathology, also mediating the negative feed-back mechanisms on somatotroph axis. It has been previously demonstrated that IGF1 promotes cell viability in primary cultures of human non functioning pituitary adenomas, by a mechanisms involving, at least in part, mTOR signaling, which is involved in many pathways controlling proliferation. We aimed at investigating whether mTOR may mediate IGF1 effects also in...

Background: Bronchial carcinoids (BC) are rare tumors originating from endocrine cells dispersed in the respiratory epithelium. The main BC treatment is surgery, which is not feasible for large, infiltrating and metastatic disease. In these settings, medical therapy is often tried. Therefore it is important to identify new therapeutic targets and new molecules capable of providing adequate medical treatment for patients with BC. Sunitinib, is an oral, small-molecule, multi-tar...