Brain Tumors Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Brain Tumors, including details on symptoms, benign and malignant tumors, gliomas, screening, treatment.

Molecular and trophic mechanisms of tumorigenesis.

Levy A

Henry Wellcome Labs for Integrative Neuroscience & Endocrinology, University of Bristol, Dorothy Hodgkin Building, Whitson Street, Bristol BS1 3NY, UK. a.levy@bris.ac.uk

A significant proportion of pituitary macroadenomas, and by definition all microadenomas, regain trophic stability after an initial period of deregulated growth. Classical proto-oncogene activation and tumor suppressor mutation are rarely responsible, and no histologic or molecular markers reliably predict behavior. GNAS1 activation and the mutations associated with multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 and Carney complex, aryl hydrocarbon receptor interacting protein gene mutations, and a narrowing region of chromosome 11q13 in familial isolated acromegaly together account for such a small proportion of pituitary adenomas that the pituitary adenoma pathogenic epiphany is surely yet to come.

Published 29 January 2008 in Endocrinol Metab Clin North Am, 37(1): 23-50, vii.
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