Pituitary tumours

Pituitary tumours are a common type of intracranial neoplasm and, depending on the cell type of origin, have diverse endocrine and reproductive effect s. The developmental biology of the different cell types is understood to r esult from a sequential activation of a cascade of transcription factors, a nd mutations in these factors result in various forms of hypopituitarism. T umours in the pituitary gland arise from activation of dominantly acting on cogenes such as gsp, or from loss of function of a series of tumour suppres sor genes such as MEN1. Abnormal patterns of DNA methylation may be implica ted in the allelic losses that cause tumour suppressor gene silencing. The different clinically recognized types of pituitary tumour are currently tre ated by medical therapies such as dopamine and somatostatin agonists, surge ry or radiotherapy. However, these treatments are not entirely satisfactory and recent advances in gene therapy may offer valuable new therapeutic opp ortunities for patients with aggressive tumours that fail to respond to tra ditional approaches.