Plasmalemma vesicle protein-1 (PV-1) is an integral membrane protein associated with endothelial cell caveolae and fenestrae. Since endocrine glands are enriched with fenestrated endothelium, we examined the distribution of PV-1 mRNA and protein in endocrine glands and determined its cellular localization. A single transcript was detected by RT-PCR in all endocrine glands examined. A synthetic ...

Neurogenin 3 (NGN3) is necessary and sufficient for endocrine differentiation during pancreatic development and is expressed by a population of progenitor cells that give rise exclusively to hormone-secreting cells within islets. NGN3 protein can be detected in the adult rodent pancreas only following certain types of injury, when it is transiently expressed by exocrine cells undergoing reprogr...

Endoderm cells undergo sequential fate choices to generate insulin-secreting beta cells. Ezh2 of the PRC2 complex, which generates H3K27me3, modulates the transition from endoderm to pancreas progenitors, but the role of Ezh2 and H3K27me3 in the next transition to endocrine progenitors is unknown. We isolated endoderm cells, pancreas progenitors, and endocrine progenitors from different staged ...

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have the ability to form cells derived from all three germ layers, and as such have received significant attention as a possible source for insulin-secreting pancreatic beta-cells for diabetes treatment. While considerable advances have been made in generating hESC-derived insulin-producing cells, to date in vitro-derived glucose-responsive beta-cells have rem...

Specialized endocrine cells secrete a variety of peptide hormones all along the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, making it one of the largest endocrine organs in the body. Nutrients and developmental and neural cues trigger the secretion of gastrointestinal (GI) hormones from specialized endocrine cells along the GI tract. These hormones act in target tissues to facilitate digestion and regulate en...

BACKGROUND When hormones are detected in the serum of patients with bronchial carcinoma they are generally considered to originate from the tumour, but this may be not the only explanation. Pulmonary endocrine cells proliferate in lungs affected by non-neoplastic disease and their products are often demonstrable in the serum. The aim of this study was to examine the pulmonary endocrine systems ...

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS Duct cells isolated from adult human pancreas can be reprogrammed to express islet beta cell genes by adenoviral transduction of the developmental transcription factor neurogenin3 (Ngn3). In this study we aimed to fully characterize the extent of this reprogramming and intended to improve it. METHODS The extent of the Ngn3-mediated duct-to-endocrine cell reprogramming was meas...

We have used a previously unavailable model of pancreatic development, derived in vitro from human embryonic stem cells, to capture a time-course of gene, miRNA and histone modification levels in pancreatic endocrine cells. We investigated whether it is possible to better understand, and hence control, the biological pathways leading to pancreatic endocrine formation by analysing this informati...

An endocrine carcinoma of the left parotid salivary gland in a 58-year-old woman is reported. The tumour displayed a large argyrophilic cell-component and at ultrastructural level endocrine-like granules (ELG) were evident. As endocrine-paracrine cells are not normally present in the parotid, it is suggested that the endocrine elements may have been derived from an anomalous differentiation of ...

The endocrine system mediates long-range peptide hormone signaling to broadcast changes in metabolic status to distant target tissues via the circulatory system. In many animals, the diffuse endocrine system of the gut is the largest endocrine tissue, with the full spectrum of endocrine cell subtypes not yet fully characterized. Here, we combine molecular mapping, lineage tracing and genetic an...