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Endocrine Abstracts (2017) 49 EP1449 | DOI: 10.1530/endoabs.49.EP1449

1Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (i3S), Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal; 2Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal; 3Medical Faculty of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal; 4Institute of Biomedical Sciences of Abel Salazar, Porto, Portugal; 5Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, University and Hospital Center of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; 6Medical Faculty, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; 7University and Hospital Center of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; 8Department of Pathology and Oncology, Medical Faculty of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal; 9Department of Pathology, Hospital de S.João, Porto, Portugal; 10Inserm UMR-S1052, CNRS UMR5286, Centre de Recherche en Cancérologie de Lyon, Lyon, France.


Thyroid cancer therapy is based on surgery followed by radioiodine treatment of tumor remnants and metastases. The incorporation of radioiodine by cancer cells is mediated by sodium iodide symporter (NIS), normally present in thyroid follicular cells’ membrane. We studied the expression of NIS in a series of 229 thyroid primary tumors using real time PCR and immunohistochemistry, and searched for possible associations between NIS expression and clinicopathological features, molecular data, response to therapy and prognosis. NIS mRNA levels were significantly lower in carcinomas than in normal adjacent thyroid; carcinomas from males or with vascular invasion presented significantly less NIS mRNA expression than carcinomas from women and non invasive carcinomas. BRAFV600E tumors and those presenting extrathyroidal extension had a tendency to display lower NIS mRNA expression than tumors BRAFWT and no extrathyroidal extention. Regarding immunohistochemistry, only 12/211 of the cases demonstrated NIS in the basolateral membrane of tumor cells; these cases showed variable outcomes concerning therapy response and prognosis. All but one of the aforementioned cases were wild type for BRAF, NRAS and TERT promoter mutations. NIS immunohistochemical expression in primary tumors did not predict tumor behavior or response to therapy. NIS mRNA expression was more informative of tumor aggressiveness than NIS protein expression. In order to validate our data we also searched possible associations between NIS mRNA expression and clinicopathological and molecular features on 378 primary papillary thyroid carcinomas of the TCGA database. Further studies are needed to confirm the association observed between the presence of the oncogenic mutations (BRAF, NRAS and TERT promoter) and both lower mRNA expression and diminished membrane targeting of NIS protein.

Volume 49

19th European Congress of Endocrinology

Lisbon, Portugal
20 May 2017 - 23 May 2017

European Society of Endocrinology 

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