Endocrine Abstracts

Transport of farm animals is considered as a key stress factor including multiple stressors as handling or fasting. In humans, compounds for the IGF-system are affected by acute or critical illness or stress. We have asked, if compounds from the IGF-system also may have biomarker potential in farm animals. A total of 80 pigs were transported for 2 h from a commercial finishing farm to the slaughterhouse. Blood samples from 40 pigs were taken before (basal levels) and after shi...

IGF binding proteins (IGFBPs) are important biomarkers for diagnostics and treatment studies. In different physiological conditions IGFBPs are actively degraded by specific proteases. Due to the detection of intact and fragmented IGFBPs, ELISA or RIA techniques may generate biased IGFBP-data. We thus developed quantitative western ligand blotting for comprehensive monitoring of intact IGFBPs and IGFBP-profiles in biological fluids of vertebrates. The dynamic range for each IGF...

IGFBP-2 represents a multifunctional protein with effects on growth, reproductive development, aging, and metabolism. For the expression of these diverse effects in vivo, IGFBP-2 has a number of binding sites for IGFs, integrins, and proteoglycans. In order to assess the relative contributions of these binding sites to the multiple effects of IGFBP-2, we have developed transgenic mouse models overexpressing intact or mutant IGFBP-2. Here we discuss functions of the RG...