Is receptor profiling useful for predicting pituitary therapy?

IS RECEPTOR PROFILING USEFUL FOR PREDICTING PITUITARY THERAPY? Eur J Endocrinol. 2018 Aug 23;: Authors: Marazuela M, Ramos-Leví AM, Borges de Souza P, Zatelli MC Abstract Medical treatment of pituitary tumours may present important challenges in the presence of resistance to first line therapy. In this setting, the availability of specific markers of responsiveness/resistance could be helpful to provide tailored patients' treatment. Pituitary receptor profiling has emerged as a potentially useful tool for predicting the response to specific pituitary-directed medical therapy, mainly somatostatin analogues and dopamine agonists. However, its utility is not always straightforward. In fact, agonist-receptor coupling to the consequent biological response is complex and sometimes jeopardizes the understanding of the molecular basis of pharmacological resistance. Defective expression of pituitary receptors, genetic alterations, truncated variants, impaired signal transduction or involvement of other proteins, such as cytoskeleton proteins or the Aryl hydrocarbon receptor interacting protein amongst others, have been linked to differential tumour phenotype or treatment responsiveness with conflicting results, keeping the debate on the utility of pituitary receptor profiling open. Why does this occur? How can we overcome the difficulties? Is there a true role for pituitary receptor profiling in the near future? All authors of this debate ar...
Source: European Journal of Endocrinology - Category: Endocrinology Authors: Tags: Eur J Endocrinol Source Type: research