Somatostatin News and Research

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Professor receives 2014 Rolf Luft Award for research on diabetes and endocrinology

Dr. Roger Unger, Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center has been awarded the 2014 Rolf Luft Award for his identification of glucagon as a pancreatic hormone that raises blood sugar levels, having the opposite effect of insulin.

18 Mar 2014

AAA gets orphan drug designation status for radiopharmaceutical, Gallium-68 DOTATATE

Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA), a fast growing international player in Molecular Nuclear Medicine (MNM), announced today that they have received orphan drug designation status for their radiopharmaceutical, Gallium-68 DOTATATE.

4 Mar 2014

Drugs often fail to bring acromegaly under control in routine clinical practice

Over a quarter of UK patients treated for growth hormone-producing tumours do not achieve 'safe' growth hormone levels, according to a 30 year UK multi-centre study of clinical management of the rare disease acromegaly. The findings by the Society for Endocrinology UK Acromegaly Register, published in the November issue of Clinical Endocrinology, show that drugs to control acromegaly often fail to bring the disease completely under control in routine clinical practice.

10 Oct 2013

Pancreatic protein essential for maintaining functional state of beta cells

Researchers at the Pediatric Diabetes Research Center (PDRC) at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that the pancreatic protein Nkx6.1 - a beta-cell enriched transcription factor - is essential to maintaining the functional state of beta cells.

13 Sep 2013

Neuroscientists identify key circuit elements that contribute to everyday decision in ACC

You are sitting on your couch flipping through TV channels trying to decide whether to stay put or get up for a snack. Such everyday decisions about whether to "stay" or to "go" are supported by a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is part of the prefrontal cortex.

27 May 2013

Chiasma, Roche enter agreement to develop and commercialize Octreolin

Roche and Chiasma Inc., a privately held biopharma company, announced today that they have entered into an agreement to develop and commercialize Chiasma's proprietary product Octreolin, initially for acromegaly and subsequently for neuroendocrine tumors.

19 Feb 2013

Study examines how fear responses are learned, controlled and memorized

A rustle of undergrowth in the outback: it's a sound that might make an animal or person stop sharply and be still, in the anticipation of a predator. That "freezing" is part of the fear response, a reaction to a stimulus in the environment and part of the brain's determination of whether to be afraid of it.

29 Jan 2013

FDA approves Novartis Signifor injection for treatment of Cushing's disease

Novartis announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Signifor (pasireotide) injection for the treatment of adult patients with Cushing's disease for whom pituitary surgery is not an option or has not been curative.

14 Dec 2012

Radiopharmaceutical Tektrotyd continues to receive interest and recognition

Physicians - attendees of the 25th Annual EANM (European Association of Nuclear Medicine) Congress (October 27-31, Milan) - expressed their continuing interest in and recognition for Tektrotyd, a radiopharmaceutical responsible for significant progress in diagnostics/therapy of neuroendocrine tumours.

8 Nov 2012

FDA EMDAC votes unanimously in support of Signifor use for treatment of Cushing's disease

The US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee (EMDAC) has voted unanimously in support of the use of Signifor (pasireotide) for the treatment of patients with Cushing's disease who require medical therapeutic intervention.

7 Nov 2012

Two major classes of brain cells repress neural activity in specific mathematical ways

The brain has billions of neurons, arranged in complex circuits that allow us to perceive the world, control our movements and make decisions. Deciphering those circuits is critical to understanding how the brain works and what goes wrong in neurological disorders.

9 Aug 2012

Novartis’ pasireotide offers symptom relief for patients with advanced neuroendocrine tumors

A researcher at Moffitt Cancer Center and his international team of colleagues have reported study results on a novel multireceptor-targeted somatostatin analogue called pasireotide (SOM230) manufactured by Novartis Pharma AG.

7 Aug 2012

Novel multireceptor-targeted somatostatin analogue found effective against neuroendocrine tumors

6 Aug 2012

Researchers use metal complexes to modify peptide hormones

Researchers at the RUB and from Berkeley have used metal complexes to modify peptide hormones. In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, they report for the first time on the three-dimensional structure of the resulting metal-peptide compounds.

9 Jul 2012

New somatostatin vaccines promote weight loss

New vaccines promote weight loss. A new study, published in BioMed Central's open access journal, Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology, assesses the effectiveness of two somatostatin vaccinations, JH17 and JH18, in reducing weight gain and increasing weight loss in mice.

9 Jul 2012

Combination treatment improves progression-free survival in pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors

Combination treatment with everolimus, an inhibitor of the mammalian target rapamycin (mTOR), and octreotide has shown to improve progression-free survival for patients with advanced neuroendocrine tumors and a history of carcinoid syndrome, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

30 Nov 2011

New guidelines for the treatment of acromegaly, a serious growth hormone disorder

It’s said a lot can happen in seven days. In seven years, a lot has happened in the understanding of acromegaly, a debilitating condition that causes a patient to have too much growth hormone. It’s seven years since the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists last produced guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acromegaly. Their 2004 guidelines were just 13 pages long. Their latest, the 2011 guidelines, have grown – to 44 pages.

31 Aug 2011

New Acromegaly clinical practice guidelines

Today the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) released updated Medical Guidelines for Clinical Practice for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Acromegaly.

9 Aug 2011

Molecular radiotherapy offers hope for children with neuroblastoma

A new treatment option may soon be available for children with neuroblastoma according to research published in the July issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

30 Jun 2011

Octreotide inhibits HepG2 proliferation, study confirms

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common malignancy in the world and is estimated to cause approximately half a million deaths annually. Undoubtedly, the best available treatment for all liver tumors is complete surgical resection. However, the synthetic somatostatin analogue octreotide has been found effective in inhibiting tumor growth in a variety of experimental models. It has been reported that octreotide inhibits the proliferation and induces apoptosis of different HCC cell lines in vitro.

1 Feb 2011