Pituitary adenomas (PAs) are common cranial tumors that affect the quality of life in patients. Early detection of PA is beneficial for avoiding clinical complications of this disease and increasing the quality of life. Noncoding RNAs, including long noncoding RNA, miRNA and circRNA, regulate protein expression, mostly by inhibiting the translation process. Studies have shown that dysregulation of noncoding RNAs is associated with PA. Hence understanding the expression pattern of noncoding RNAs can be considered a promising method for developing biomarkers. This article reviews data on the expression pattern of dysregulated noncoding RNAs involved in PA. Possible molecular mechanisms by which the dysregulated noncoding RNA could possibly induce PA are also described.

Pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNET) do not only belong to the most common intracranial neoplasms but seem to be generally more common than has been thought. Minimally invasive liquid biopsies have the potential to improve their early screening efficiency as well as monitor prognosis by facilitating the diagnostic procedures. This review aims to assess the potential of using liquid biopsies of different kinds of biomarker species that have only been obtained from solid pituitary tissues so far. Numerous molecules have been associated with the development of a PitNET, suggesting that it often develops from the cumulative effects of many smaller genetic or epigenetic changes. These minor changes eventually pile up to switch critical molecules into tumor-promoting states, which may be the key regulatory nodes representing the most potent marker substances for a diagnostic test. Drugs targeting these nodes may be superior for the therapeutic outcome and therefore the identification of such pituitary-specific cellular key nodes will help to accelerate their application in medicine. The ongoing genetic degeneration in pituitary adenomas suggests that repeated tumor profiling via liquid biopsies will be necessary for personalized and effective treatment solutions.

Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) is the standard biochemical marker for the diagnosis and treatment control of acromegaly and growth hormone deficiency (GHD). However, its limitations necessitate the screening for new specific and sensitive biomarkers. The elonginB/C-cullin5-SOCS-box-complex (ECS-complex) (an intracellular five-protein complex) is stimulated by circulating growth hormone (GH) and regulates GH receptor levels through a negative feedback loop. It mediates the cells’ sensitivity for GH and therefore, represents a potent new biomarker for those diseases. In this study, individual ECS-complex proteins were measured in whole blood samples of patients with acromegaly (n = 32) or GHD (n = 12) via ELISA and compared to controls. Hierarchical clustering of the results revealed that by combining the three ECS-complex proteins suppressor of cytokine signaling 2 (SOCS2), cullin-5 and ring-box protein 2 (Rbx-2), 93% of patient samples could be separated from controls, despite many patients having a normal IGF-1 or not receiving medical treatment. SOCS2 showed the best individual diagnostic performance with an overall accuracy of 0.93, while the combination of the three proteins correctly identified all patients and controls. This resulted in perfect sensitivity and specificity for all patient groups, which demonstrates potential benefits of the ECS-complex proteins as clinical biomarkers for the diagnostics of GH-related diseases and substantiates their important role in GH metabolism.