Primary Cultures from Human GH-secreting or Clinically Non-functioning Pituitary Adenomas

Pituitary adenomas are among the more frequent intracranial tumors usually treated with both surgical and pharmacological–based on somatostatin and dopamine agonists–approaches. Although mostly benign tumors, the occurrence of invasive behaviors is often detected resulting in poorer prognosis. The use of primary cultures from human pituitary adenomas represented a significant advancement in the knowledge of the mechanisms of their development and in the definition of the determinants of their pharmacological sensitivity. Moreover, recent studies identified also in pituitary adenomas putative tumor stem cells representing, according to the current hypothesis, the real cellular targets to eradicate most malignancies. In this protocol, we describe the procedure to establish primary cultures from human pituitary adenomas, and how to select, in vitro expand, and phenotypically characterize putative pituitary adenoma stem cells.