Endocrine Abstracts

Glycyrrhizin (GL) is a major bioactive triterpene glycoside of licorice root, a traditional Chinese herbal medicine. GL and primary metabolite 18β-glycyrrhetinic acid (GA) have been developed as anti-inflammatory and antiviral drugs for liver diseases in China and Japan. Hepatic VLDL secretory pathway is not only responsible for lipid homeostasis but also associated with viral particles assembly and secretion. Hepatocyte nuclear factor 4α (HNF4α) together with i...

Glucocorticoids (GC) are potent anti-inflammatory compounds, acting mainly through the glucocorticoid receptor (GR). GC therapy, however, has debilitating side-effects, necessitating safer new alternative therapies. The natural GC metabolite 5α-Tetrahydrocorticosterone (5αTHB) is anti-inflammatory in vivo in mice, but with fewer side-effects. Its mechanism of action is unknown, and here we test signalling via GR and the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR). 5&#94...

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are exogenous compounds that affect the endocrine system, disrupt the hormonal balance and consequently cause the adverse health effects in humans. These compounds persist and accumulate in the environment and can easily gain entry to the food chain. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) and its heterodimeric partner retinoid X receptor alpha (RXRα) are very often targets of EDCs. PPARγ play crucial role i...

The V2 vasopressin receptor (V2-R) mediates the effect of vasopressin on the water reabsorption in the kidney and several mutations in the V2-R have been identified causing nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (NDI). In this study, we investigated a previously not characterized mutation of the. We obtained genomic DNA of a young male patient with NDI, the AVPR2 gene was amplified with PCR and a missense mutation (S127F) was identified. We monitored the cellular localization of the S...

Vitamin D receptor (VDR) signalling can be affected with a variety of compounds, both endo- or exogenous. However, any disruption of VDR transcriptional activity can exert severe physiological or pathophysiological outcomes. It is therefore of a great importance to have a reliable in vitro screening technique that would provide a tool for efficient identification of agonists and activators of human VDR. In the current work, we described two novel human reporter cell l...

3-Iodothyronamine (3-T1AM) is an endogenous metabolite of thyroid hormone (TH) for which was shown to have various effects. One of the effects is body temperature decline, which may be related with menthol receptor TRPM8. Normally, this ion channel is expressed in neuronal tissue, where it has a nociceptive role. Functional TRPM8 expression has also been shown in non-neuronal cells of the eye such as corneal and conjunctival epithelial cells, corneal endothelial cel...

Introduction: Prostate cancer is a public health problem worldwide. The cure is unlikely and therapeutic alternatives are limited. The Brazilian biodiversity represents a huge source of potential discovery of new drugs derived from plants. We therefore aimed to conduct a biomonitoring chemical study of plant extracts from Pouteria sp. previously shown to be cytotoxic in androgen-sensitive (LNCaP) and androgen-resistant (PC3) human prostate cancer cell lines.<p cla...