Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Heterozygous germline AIP mutations can lead to young-onset invasive GH-secreting adenomas. There are no data available to explain the proliferative and invasive nature of AIP-mutation positive somatotrophinomas.Methods: Cell viability (MTS assay), invasion (single cell fluorescence invasion assay) and migration assays (Boyden chambers) were used to further characterise the phenotype of AIP-silenced GH3 cells. Affymetrix gen...

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are lipophilic chemicals that chronically accumulate in the body during lifetime from fetal life. Some POPs alter the endocrine metabolism and are considered as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Human exposure to EDCs, even at low doses, raises some serious concerns for human health because they can participate in hormone-dependent cancer initiation and progression (prostate, breast, testis). These mostly non-metabolizable molecules ar...

Due to the urgent need for new prostate cancer (PCa) therapies, the role of androgen receptor (AR) interacting proteins should be investigated. In this study we aimed to address whether the AR coactivator nuclear receptor coactivator 1 (NCOA1) is involved in PCa progression. Therefore, we tested the effect of long-term NCOA1 knockdown on processes relevant to metastasis formation. [3H]-thymidine incorporation assays revealed a reduced proliferation rate in ...

Introduction: Rats carrying a germline loss-of-function mutation in p27 (MENX syndrome) develop bilateral pheochromcoytoma (PCC) with complete penetrance. Gene expression profiling of rat PCCs identified genes highly expressed in tumors vs normal adrenal medulla. Several of them were found up-regulated also in human PCCs (both sporadic and familial), including the BMP7 gene encoding a member of the bone morphogenic protein family. BMP7 has been shown to be involved in other hu...

Iron represents a micronutrient for cellular metabolism and aerobic respiration, and is essential for proper brain development in the fetal and early neonatal period. However, excess iron produces toxic build-up via free radical formation. In thalassaemic and juvenile hemochromatosis patients with pubertal failure, iron overload interferes with the correct function of the hypothalamic–pituitary axis, leading to hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism and growth failure, but the me...