The well-recognized "big" forms (45,000-100,000 mol wt) of immunoreactive human growth hormone (hGH) in human serum have been reported to be random aggregates or formal polymers. However, we have now investigated the possibility that they are protein-bound forms. After incubation of monomeric 125I-hGH with normal serum, gel chromatography indicated a peak of bound 125I-hGH (at approximately 120...

Human growth hormone (hGH) replacement therapy has been widely available for clinical purposes for more than fifty years. Starting in 1958, hGH was obtained from cadaveric pituitaries, but in 1985 the association between hGH therapy and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was reported. In the same year, the use of recombinant hGH (rhGH) was approved. Side effects of rhGH replacement therapy in children a...

The prescription of growth hormone therapy for children who are not growth hormone deficient is one of the controversies in contemporary paediatric endocrinology. Is it morally appropriate to enhance the growth, by means of medical treatment, of a child wish idiopathic short stature? The medical, moral, and philosophical questions in this area are many. Data on the effects of human growth hormo...

We have determined the complete sequence of the human growth hormone (hGH) gene and the position of the mature 5' end of the hGH mRNA within the sequence. Comparison of this sequence with that of a cloned hGH cDNA shows that the gene is interrupted by four intervening sequences. S1 mapping shows that one of these intervening sequences has two different 3' splice sites. These alternate splicing ...

Tumor derived human growth hormone (hGH) has been implicated in cancer development and progression. However, the specific functional role of autocrine/paracrine hGH in colorectal cancer (CRC) remains largely to be determined. Herein, we demonstrated a crucial oncogenic role of autocrine hGH in CRC progression. Elevated hGH expression was detected in CRC compared to normal colorectal tissue, and...

Growth hormone (GH) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of proliferative diabetic retinopathy. We sought to determine whether this could be mediated by an effect of GH on proliferation of endothelial cells, and, for this purpose, established long-term cultures of human retinal microvascular endothelial cells (hREC) from normal postmortem human eyes. High-purity (greater than 95%) hREC prepa...

In order to study the periplasmic expression of human growth hormone (hGH) in Escherichia coli, the related cDNA was inserted in two expression plasmids carrying pelB signal peptide, one with lac bacterial promoter and the other with a bacteriophage T7-based promoter. The recombinant plasmids were moved to TG1 and BL21 strains of E. coli, respectively. To induce the expression systems, IPTG and...