His lab began to focus on how known hormones (e.g., ACTH) are able to switch adrenal regeneration on and off. “Despite this, the rules that control its regeneration following injury or its daily maintenance are not well understood.” “The adrenal gland was one of the first tissues-as early as the nineteenth century-known to undergo regeneration,” said Breault, an endocrinologist at Boston Children’s Hospital.

If this system fails, too much stress hormone may be produced, which can lead to heart disease, digestive conditions, poor memory, and other problems. To ensure that just the right amount of stress hormone is produced each day, cells of the adrenal are continuously renewed throughout a person’s lifetime. The triangle-shaped adrenal glands sit atop the kidneys and release stress hormones to help the body respond to challenges in the environment. In fact, it does, discovered HSCI Principal Faculty member David Breault, MD, PhD, who has just shown that the adrenal gland uses cellular reprogramming (called lineage conversion) for both its daily maintenance and regeneration following injury. Yamanaka’s discovery raised the tantalizing question of whether similar reprogramming occurs in nature. That work earned him last year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, discovered a way to reprogram mature skin cells back to a stem cell state so they can be converted into any cell type a scientist is interested in studying.

Adrenal