Endocrine Abstracts

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), a rare tumor, with incidence of 1–2 per million population annually, has a bimodal distribution by age, with cases clustering in children under 6, and in adults 30–40 years old. ACC has a dismal prognosis. The only curative treatment is complete surgical excision of the tumor, but late diagnosis prevents surgical cure, since ACC frequently recurs and metastasize. Chemotherapy is frequently ineffective, due to the overexpression of the ...

The currently curative therapy for pancreatic endocrine tumours (PET), accounting for <3% of pancreatic tumors, is complete surgical resection, which is achieved in the minority of cases. Most tumors are diagnosed in a late stage, especially in endocrine-inactive forms, indicating the need for further medical therapy. The serine–threonine protein kinase C (PKC) family plays central regulatory roles in several cellular processes, including cell proliferation. PKC signa...

GH and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) are known to promote breast carcinogenesis. Breast cancer (BC) incidence in not increased in female acromegalic patients, but mortality is greater as compared to general population. We previously demonstrated that GH/IGF1 excess influences BC response to therapy, possibly accounting for the increased mortality. We indeed showed that GH and IGF1 induce cell proliferation of a BC cell line, the MCF7 cells, providing protection towards t...

It has been demonstrated that everolimus, an mTOR inhibitor, has potent anti-proliferative effect in a human Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma (MTC) cell line, TT, and in two human MTC primary cultures. We aimed at evaluating the possible antiproliferative effects of everolimus in a group of 20 human MTC in primary culture. To this purpose, 20 MTCs were dispersed in primary cultures, treated without or with 1 nM – 1 μM everolimus, 10 nM SOM230, and/or 50 nM IGF1. Cell viab...