Endocrine Abstracts

Low birth weight is associated with adult disorders characterised by insulin resistance such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidaemia and coronary heart disease. However the mechanism of this established association is still uncertain and controversial. For the past decade research has principally focused on the role of the intra-uterine environment. It has been proposed that under nutrition in utero results in a permanent re-programming of the fetal metabolism. Genetic...

During development, the control of growth (mass increase) and cell division ensures that animals grow to reproducible sizes and contain cells that are consistent in size and number. We are interested in understanding more about how growth is regulated during development to achieve this. By studying the development of Drosophila imaginal discs (simple epithelial structures that give rise to the epidermal structures of the adult fly), we have found that signalling via a p...

There is compelling evidence that certain families of endothelial cell-specific tyrosine kinases and their ligands (e.g. VEGFR/VEGF, Tie2/Ang) are essential for embryonic development and for angiogenesis in a wide variety of physiological and pathological circumstances. There is also evidence for a tissue-specific and tumor-specific regulation of endothelial cell growth and phenotype.We recently identified EG-VEGF, an endothelial cell mitogen with a unique selectivity, ess...