Endocrine Abstracts

The global prevalence of obesity continues to rise, creating a growing need for new effective medicines. Selective targeting of visceral obesity (fat around the internal organs) would be particularly advantageous because it carries a greater risk for cardiometabolic diseases. The ectonucleotide pyrophosphatase (ENPP) enzyme family participates in several pathological conditions including diabetes (ENPP1, and ENPP2, also known as autotaxin) and vascular dysfunction (ENPP3-4). O...

Obesity increases the risk of certain cancers, especially tumours that reside close to adipose tissue (e.g. breast cancers and ovarian metastasis to omentum). Adipose tissue in obesity and tumour micro-environmentsshare a common pathogenic feature, oxygen deprivation (hypoxia, Hx). Here we hypothesised that this hypoxic microenvironment causes changes in key metabolic pathways in adipocytes leading to increased cancer cell growth. To test this, human or mouse breast (BC) and o...

Adipose tissue (AT) dysfunction is thought to be a central component in the pathophysiology of obesity-associated metabolic disease. Low AT oxygenation (hypoxia) is suggested to be a driver of this dysfunction, yet studies in humans have resulted in conflicting data. Therefore, we aimed to investigate if markers of AT hypoxia were present in the subcutaneous AT of morbidly obese individuals who had hypoxia from obesity hypoventilation syndrome (OHS), with or without obstructiv...

Background: Liver fibrosis in cirrhosis is characterized by accumulation of extracellular matrix from activated hepatic stellate cells (HSCs). Glucocorticoids (GCs) limit HSC activation in vitro. Local GC levels are regulated by 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-1 (11βHSD1) which converts inactive GCs (11-dehydrocorticosterone) into active GCs (corticosterone). In this study we hypothesized that 11βHSD1 could potentially inhibit liver fibrosis.<p cla...

Glucocorticoid levels rise dramatically in late gestation in mammals and are essential for organ maturation in preparation for birth. They are widely used clinically to mature the lungs of premature infants and hypomorphic GR mice die neonatally due to severe lung atelectasis. Here, we describe fetal lethality in GR null (GR−/−) mice with 51% loss at E17.5 (P<0.05) that could be due to impaired cardiac development. Histology showed reduced hea...