# The National Biorepository and Resource for Pituitary Neuroendocrine Tumor Translational Research (BioPitNeT)

> **NIH NIH RC2** · UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA · 2024 · $19,517

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNETs) are rare and understudied heterogeneous tumors that are detrimental
to health causing increased mortality and poor quality of life. Cushing’s disease (CD) is a serious endocrine
disease caused by an adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)-secreting PitNET that subsequently stimulates the
adrenal glands to overproduce cortisol. Chronic exposure to excess cortisol has several detrimental effects on
health, including increased stroke rates, diabetes, obesity, depression, anxiety, and a threefold increase in the
risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Despite decades of research, current treatments for CD
remain suboptimal, and the development of targeted therapies is challenging due to the limited knowledge of
PitNET tumor cellular and molecular complexity. The RC2 will fund the National Biorepository and Resource
for Pituitary Neuroendocrine Tumor Translational Research (BioPitNeT) which will be an open source,
clinically relevant deep tumor phenotyping platform and biorepository. This is the first phase of a contin-
uum of translational- and hypothesis-driven research that will accelerate the development of effective therapies
for PitNETs, preventing tumor recurrences and improving remission rates and quality of life for patients. The
BioPitNeT team will: 1) establish a large-scale unique resource within an infrastructure that will generate sus-
tainable novel research tools benefiting investigators with focused translational research of PitNETs, and 2)
implement interdisciplinary approaches and expertise to generate a resource that will foster translational and
hypothesis-driven research in PitNET diseases. The Registry for Adenomas of the PItuitary and related Disor-
ders (RAPID) is a twelve center US consortium founded in 2021 to improve treatment of patients with PitNETs
and funded by grateful patients. The BioPitNet leverages the RAPID Consortium clinical platform to combine
clinical annotations of future prospectively enrolled patients with molecular and pathological information using
state-of-the-art preclinical models. The low incidence of CD requires multicenter collaboration and interdiscipli-
nary team science partnerships between basic- and clinician-translational scientists comprising the expertise of
professionals trained in complimentary fields including medical and surgical treatment, neuropathology, molec-
ular genetics of PitNETs, molecular pathology and high-plex spatial imaging, organoid and iPSC technology,
canine comparative oncology disease models and translational bioinformatics. The BioPitNeT will be estab-
lished by the successful completion of Aim 1: To establish the BioPitNeT centralized biorepository comprising
of resources that will be benchmarked to the patients’ PitNET tissue of origin, Aim 2: To develop a PitNET
clinically relevant classification system for CD, and Aim 3: To establish a biobank of induced pluripotent stem
cell (iPSCs) lines genetica...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10976995
- **Project number:** 1RC2DK140838-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
- **Principal Investigator:** Andrew Scott Little
- **Activity code:** RC2 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $19,517
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-01 → 2024-10-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10976995

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10976995, The National Biorepository and Resource for Pituitary Neuroendocrine Tumor Translational Research (BioPitNeT) (1RC2DK140838-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10976995. Licensed CC0.

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