Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: New therapeutic strategies are urgently needed to improve radioiodide (RAI) uptake and efficiently ablate thyroid cancer cells, thereby reducing the risk of recurrent disease. We recently utilised high throughput screening and identified FDA-approved compounds capable of inducing sodium iodide symporter (NIS) function to enhance iodide uptake. Categorisation revealed a high proportion of drugs that modulate proteostasis, with 6 of the top 15 targeting activity of...

Dysregulation of sodium-iodide symporter (NIS) function is common in differentiated thyroid cancer, resulting in sub-optimal radioiodide therapy and poorer clinical outcome. Recent developments in identifying proteins that regulate the function of the sodium iodide symporter have highlighted two proteins involved in internalisation of NIS from the plasma membrane: AP-2 and moesin. Clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) of NIS is facilitated through the adaptor protein 2 (AP2) com...

A decline in skeletal muscle nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) can decrease mitochondrial function and energy metabolism in age-related metabolic disease. Restoration of NAD+ using the precursor nicotinamide riboside (NR) may serve to support age and disease driven impairment of mitochondrial energy metabolism. Manipulating NAD+, and consequently cellular pyridine nucleotide NAD(P)(H) pools, may impact the flux of glucose through intermediary energy metabolism pathways....

Introduction: Iodine is essential for thyroid hormones synthesis, and fetal/infant neurodevelopment. There is increasing evidence of iodine insufficiency among British women. The MABY study is a longitudinal cohort study assessing the iodine and thyroid status of pregnant women and their offspring.Methods: Healthy women were recruited (target 697 mother/infant pairs) from antenatal clinics at gestational week (GW) 28±1. Blood and urine were collecte...

The most common form of endocrine cancer is differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC). Outcomes of DTC largely depend on radioiodine treatment, which is mediated the sodium-iodide symporter (NIS). However, many tumours exhibit NIS dysregulation, resulting in a poorer prognosis. Since breast cancer can also overexpress NIS, albeit of limited function, radioiodine treatment may be a promising treatment option. Our previous data show that overexpression of the pituitary tumor-transform...

Although the sodium iodide symporter (NIS) is expressed in 70–80% of breast cancers, only 20–30% is located at the plasma membrane (PM) and therefore functional. Previous work in thyroid cells leads demonstrated that PBF redistributes NIS from the PM into intracellular vesicles, potently reducing radioiodide uptake. We therefore examined whether increased membranous NIS could facilitate radioiodide therapy for breast cancer. Immunofluorescent microscopy revealed co-l...

Pituitary tumor-transforming gene binding factor (PBF) is a ubiquitous glycoprotein which is over-expressed in thyroid, breast and other endocrine cancers, and modulates cellular invasion, radioiodine uptake and thyroid hormone efflux. Papillary thyroid cancer patients with high PBF expression show decreased disease-specific survival compared to those with lower expression. PBF expression has recently been correlated with breast cancer metastasis and colon cancer extra-mural v...

Metastasis is a multistep process responsible for the vast majority of endocrine cancer deaths. We have previously identified the proto-oncogene PBF to be upregulated in differentiated thyroid cancer, and recently PBF expression has been correlated with distant thyroid cancer metastasis at diagnosis. Further, PBF potently induces breast cancer cell invasion in vitro, and our recent in vivo data demonstrate that colorectal tumours with higher PBF protein expre...

Androgens initially drive prostate tumour growth. Although in advanced disease there is no longer dependence on circulating androgens, the androgen receptor (AR) remains a key driver of this lethal stage thus new ways to inhibit its activity are required. MicroRNAs play vital roles in prostate cancer (PCa) development, progression and metastasis. Previous studies have examined microRNAs dysregulated in PCa, and also identified androgen-regulated microRNAs. We approached microR...

By exploiting the canonical function of the sodium iodide symporter (NIS), ablative radioiodide therapy is an effective treatment for thyroid cancer. However, a subset of patients are unable to accumulate sufficient radioiodide due to decreased expression and/or plasma membrane localisation of NIS. Radioiodide therapy has been proposed as a viable treatment for breast cancer, but is hampered by low levels of NIS membrane localisation. Currently, the regulation of NIS trafficki...