Endocrine Abstracts

This prestigious prize is intended for established workers in the field of basic and clinical neuroendocrinology and is generously supported by Ipsen. This year’s recipient is Prof. Carlos Dieguez. The prize will be presented as part of the ECE 2015 opening ceremony where Prof. Dieguez will deliver his lecture. Prof. Dieguez will also deliver two other lectures at future ESE scientific meetings. Further information can be found at <a href="http://www.ese-hormones.org/priz...

The question on how cells, tissues and organisms are able to detect energy/nutrient availability has been the focus of research for many years. Data gleaned recently have identified different nutrient-sensing circuits implicated in the regulation of different homeostatic process. Furthermore, there has been a steady increase in our knowledge regarding the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in nutrient detection and integration. In particular, this has allowed for a bet...

Introduction: Prolactin (PRL) acting through its receptor may play a role in regulating fetal BAT development. Chronic administration of prolactin to the dam throughout pregnancy enhances the maturation of BAT with the resulting offspring having more UCP-1 suggesting a direct role in switching on UCP1 at birth. The present study aimed to determine the effect of PRL on UCP-1 expression postnatally.Methods: Twenty seven female and twenty four male rats wer...

Liver-expressed antimicrobial peptide 2 (LEAP-2) has been recently characterized as an endogenous GHSR1a antagonist. LEAP-2 is produced mainly in the liver, and it was described that an acute ghrelin administration blocks food intake, GH release and normalize glucose levels during chronic caloric restriction. For this reason, it could be considered as a key endocrine factor in the regulation of systemic energy metabolism. Nevertheless, the exact mechanism of action is still un...

Nur77 is an orphan nuclear receptor included in the NR4A family. This protein has been studied as a transcriptional regulator of glucose metabolism in different tissues. We aimed to investigate the endogenous role of Nur77 on energy and metabolic homeostasis. For this purpose, we used male and female Nur77-deficient mice and their wild-type littermates. We challenged them to standard diet and high fat diet, and analyzed different parameters involved in energy balance (food int...

The pituitary is an anatomically well protected endocrine gland in permanent contact with the central nervous system. Although it was known that pituitary has plasticity in response to the physiological demands of the body, there were few clear data about the post-natal mechanisms in charge of this plasticity. The discovery of a group of cells expressing stem cell markers precisely organized in the outer zone of the adenopituitary open up new possibilities to explain the const...

Ghrelin is a peptide hormone secreted by the stomach with orexigenic properties that induce food intake trough the activation of hypothalamic AMP activated kinase (AMPK). In rodents fed on normal diet the central administration of ghrelin induces an increase in food intake, however, when fed a high fat diet (HFD) rodents are resistant to the orexigenic effect of ghrelin. Recent data show that Cidea interacts with AMPK β-subunit and promotes AMPK degradation trough ubiquit...

The importance of cell cycle regulation in pituitary biology has been suggested from the fact that many gene-targeted mouse models of cell cycle mutations develop diverse pituitary pathologies. The retinoblastoma protein (pRb)/cyclin-dependent kinase 4 (Cdk4) pathway, one of the major mitogen-sensor routes in the cell, seems to be critical in the control of pituitary cell proliferation. Both inactivation of pRb or hyperactivation of Cdk4 result in pituitary hyperplasias or tum...

Obesity protects from osteoporosis. Bone remodeling and energy metabolism could be regulated by the adipocyte-derived hormone, leptin acting on osteoblasts though hypothalamic pathways. Hypothalamic lesions cause obesity. Since most of these patients are also hypopituitary with low IGF1 which could affect bone metabolism the aim of our study was to investigate whether obesity would protect them from osteoporosis.Three groups of patients were studied: (1)...

The RET/GFRa/GDNF system displays a wide distribution in tissues such as nervous system, kidneys, intestine or testis. RET has been implicated in human pathologies. RET is a tyrosine-kinase receptor activated by four ligands GDNF, NTN, ART and PSPN through four co-receptors GFRa1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Activation of the receptor leads to cell differentiation or proliferation. Our group has shown that RET is expressed specifically in the somatotrope (GH) adult cell populatio...