Boost for prolactin research
18 Nov 2010 by Evoluted New Media
Understanding how the body responds to hormonal changes and inflammation could help treat diseases of the pituitary gland say researchers who have been awarded a £1.24 million to investigate the hormone prolactin.
Understanding how the body responds to hormonal changes and inflammation could help treat diseases of the pituitary gland say researchers who have been awarded a £1.24 million to investigate the hormone prolactin.
Professor Julian Davis – leader of the University of Manchester’s Developmental Biomedicine Research Group – will use the grant to learn more about how tissues control themselves and influence how the body reacts to hormonal changes like puberty, or external challenges like inflammation.
“In previous research we discovered that the activation of genes inside cells is much more dynamic and unstable than we thought, and now we want to look at how particular cells respond in different situations,” said Davis, who is also a consultant endocrinologist at Manchester Royal Infirmary.
The study will focus on prolactin which is made by the pituitary gland in the brain, but also by various other tissues including immune cells and is thought to be involved in the body’s inflammatory response. Excessive levels of prolactin caused by tumours in the pituitary gland can cause infertility.
Using the latest cell-imaging techniques, researchers aim to measure the amount of light produced by prolactin-producing pituitary and immune cells before feeding the information into mathematical models. They hope to be able to understand how different cells within tissues can become coordinated during embryonic development and during hormonal changes such as pregnancy.
“By understanding how the prolactin gene is controlled in individual cells, and how that is influenced by the organisation of cells into tissues, we can understand how the pituitary gland works, and, ultimately how we might develop new treatments for pituitary tumours,” said Davis, “We also hope to learn more about how these hormones are first produced as the pituitary gland develops before birth.”
Davis will be working with Professor Mike White from the Faculty of Life Sciences, and Professor David Rand from the department of Mathematics at the University of Warwick. They will receive £1.24 million over five years from The Wellcome Trust.
