King's College London

Researchers from the Centre for Craniofacial & Regenerative Biology combined data from many studies to build a single, clearer picture of how this gland works. They created the Consensus Pituitary Atlas, along with an easy-to-use website (epitome-atlas.com) where scientists can explore the data and analyse their own.

Fixing problems in past research

Over the past 10 years, scientists have used a method called single-cell RNA sequencing to measure how genes work in individual cells. This has also been used to study the pituitary gland. Since 2018, researchers have collected data from 1.3 million pituitary cells across nearly 40 studies.

However, these studies were often small, used only a few animals (usually male), followed different analysis methods, and employed inconsistent naming conventions for cell types. This made results hard to compare and sometimes unreliable.

A clearer, more reliable picture

The new study, led by Wellcome Trust PhD Programme student Bence Kövér, combined and carefully reviewed all existing data. The researchers found many past studies had errors, including wrongly labelled data, incorrect descriptions of methods, and missing or mixed-up data. They re-analysed everything using a consistent approach to create the Consensus Pituitary Atlas as a single, reliable reference.

The atlas makes it easier to accurately track gene activity across all pituitary cell types, including several new genes in pituitary stem cells which may help explain development, ageing, and organ regeneration. It highlighted striking differences between male and female glands, with many genes affected by hormones like oestrogen. It also revealed how stem cells interact with other cells, including pathways linked to pituitary hormone problems.

Tools to support future research

The team created machine learning tools that can automatically identify pituitary cell types. These will help researchers use consistent naming conventions and improve reproducibility across studies. All the work is available on a new online platform, epitome-atlas.com, where researchers can explore the atlas, create visualisations, and download data without needing coding skills.

Bence Kövér said:

“Previously, progress was limited by the lack of statistical power and the absence of a shared analytical framework. Our atlas is a solution for these problems.”

“The atlas helps us better understand how gene regulation works in the mouse pituitary gland, and the next step is to generalise this framework across species and disease states.”

The study, led by Professor Cynthia Andoniadou’s lab at King’s College London, was an international collaboration across several institutions, including Mount-Sinai (NY, USA), Cedars-Sinai (CA, USA), McGill (Canada) and TU Dresden (Germany).