Using techniques of molecular biology, center scientists are investigating what turns on the gene for GRP in cases of lung cancer. Understanding the factors that activate this gene in cancer is a key to new methods of diagnosing and treating lung cancer. It also may lead to ways of speeding up normal lung development and thus shortening the time that very premature infants must spend attached to respirators. These scientists also are looking for new bombesin-like peptides and receptors for those peptides. Their strategy is to first discover new peptides in frogs, where they occur at very high levels, and then to use the knowledge of amphibian peptides to guide the discovery of new human bombesin-like peptides.
Prolactin is a pituitary hormone that causes breast milk production, or lacation, in mammals.
It is known that prolactin is produced by cells in the pituitary gland and that it stimulates milk production. While nursing, the high prolactin secretion prevents the nursing mothers from ovulating. If prolactin is secreted in too high amounts in non-nursing females and in men, it causes infertility. Usually prolactin is held in check by a brain hormone called dopamine. Prolactin secretion is stimulated by progesterone, which is a steroid hormone produced by the ovary and the placenta, but the path of stimulation remains an unknown action in the brain.