CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Pituitary tumors occur sporadically (95%) or as hereditarytumors, either associated with endocrine syndromes (2.5%) oras familial isolated variants (FIPA, 2.5%). In sporadic pituitarytumors, in addition to the known somatotropic GNAS mutation,a recurrent mutation of the USP8 gene was recently detectedin corticotropinomas. Thus variable genetic and epigeneticmodifications may mostly be responsible for pituitary tumorigenesis. However, these different changes seem to modifycommon intracellular targets such as distinct tumor suppressors, cell cycle checkpoints or signaling pathways. Thus,recurrently impaired functions in concert with/or recurrentlyimpaired genes may trigger pituitary tumorigenesis. This mayalso be of relevance for the different steps involved in pituitarytumor progression such as angiogenesis, invasiveness, pituitary tumor senescence and pituitary carcinoma formation.