Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Lack of clinically relevant experimental models of human prostate cancer hampers evaluation of novel therapeutic agents. Currently, androgen deprivation therapy is the gold standard treatment for advanced prostate cancer, but inevitably cells survive and repopulate the tumour. Castrate-resistant cells are critical therapeutic targets for more effective treatments but current model systems cannot determine when they arise in disease progression and are unable to r...

Background: Adrenocortical tumors consist of benign adenomas (ACA) and highly malignant carcinomas (ACC) with a still incompletely understood pathogenesis. Our aim was to test, whether there is evidence for an adenoma-carcinoma sequence.Patients and methods: High-resolution single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarrays (Affymetrix SNP 6.0) were used to detect copy number alterations (CNAs) and copy neutral losses of heterozygosity (cnLOH) in 46 adreno...

Introduction: The prognosis of stages III–IV ACC patients is dismal. The 5-year survival of stage IV ACC ranges between 0 and 13% and no prognostic study has focused on stage III, yet. Several reports suggest a greater heterogeneity of advanced ACC prognosis that initially thought.Aim: The primary objective of our study was to analyse the prognostic factors of overall survival of the subgroup of advanced unresectable stage III–IV ACC patients c...

Introduction: Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) is a sensitive, non-invasive imaging technique capable of measuring brain metabolites in vivo. Chronic exposure to endogenous hypercortisolism in Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is associated with negative effects on memory and hippocampal volumes, even after biochemical cure.Objective: To investigate metabolites in the hippocampi of CS patients and controls, using 1</sup...

Adrenal vein sampling (AVS) is a technically demanding procedure required for identification of suitable candidates for unilateral adrenalectomy in primary aldosteronism. Recently, somatic mutations in aldosterone producing adenomas (APA) have become a focus of research. We identified KCNJ5 K+-channel mutations in 34% of APAs, and more recently mutations in 2 ATPase family members in 11 and 6%. However, it is unclear whether steroid gradients during the AVS are infl...

Background: The medical treatment options of adrenocortical cancer are limited. In our previous meta-analysis of adrenocortical tumor genomics data, adrenocortical cancer was found to be associated with reduced retinoic acid production and retinoid X receptor-mediated signaling.Objective: To study the potential antitumoral effects of 9-cis-retinoic acid (9-cisRA) on the adrenocortical cancer cell line NCI-H295R and in a xenograft model....