Identification of Wnt family inhibitors: A pituitary tumor directed whole genome approach

Wnt signaling pathways are important regulators of normal embryological development including that of the pituitary gland. Altered Wnt pathway expression is common in many human tumors however until recently the role of these pathways in human pituitary tumorigenesis has received little attention. The advent of microarray analysis has identified several Wnt pathway inhibitors that are frequently perturbed in pituitary tumors. In this review we summarize the role of these inhibitors in other human tumor types and review the current state of knowledge of Wnt inhibitor expression in pituitary tumors.