Endocrine Abstracts

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a routinely fatal cancer with no effective treatments. Understanding the genetic landscape of ACC is essential to develop novel therapeutic strategies. Recent large-scale cancer genomics projects have revealed core signalling pathways frequently altered in human ACC tumours, including the Wnt/b-catenin pathway. Aberrant Wnt activation is a hallmark of ACC observed in ~40% of tumours, and can be driven by diverse mutational events. These includ...

The immune microenvironment plays a central but ambivalent role in tumourigenesis. During initial phases of neoplasia, both innate and adaptive immune cells recognize and destroy tumour cells. However, during the process of immunoediting, tumour cells progressively reshape the microenvironment and use immune cells to favour neoangiogenesis, tumour growth and metastasis. Until recently, the role of immune response in the pathogenesis of ACC had remained elusive. Analysis of the...

Sex is an important parameter that influences biology and physiology of almost every organ. Sex bias is not restricted to homeostatic conditions, but is also evident in the predisposition and progression of diseases. The adrenal cortex, in particular, displays dramatic sex differences and the majority of adrenocortical diseases occur more frequently in women than in men. Understanding how sex hormones affect biology on the molecular level has therefore become an important focu...