Endocrine Abstracts

Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), Transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2) and Furin were known to be key players for the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Thyroid gland was shown to be one of the relevant targets for SARS-CoV-2 infection allegedly due to the higher expression levels of these molecules in follicular cells. However, it remains to be fully determined the expression of ACE2, TMPRSS2 and Furin in normal follicular cell. In addition, the putative role of these molecules...

Background: Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a downstream effector of the PI3K/AKT pathway. It can be activated by diverse stimuli, such as growth factors, nutrients, energy, stress signals and signaling pathways such as PI3K, MAPK and AMPK, in order to control cell growth, proliferation and survival. The active form of mTOR (pmTOR) may form two distinct complexes: mTORC1 that activates S6K1 and 4EBP1 which are involved in mRNA translation; and mTORC2 that activates PKC...

Osteopontin (OPN) is a matricellular protein highly expressed in cancer cells, which is able to modulate tumorigenesis and metastasis in several malignancies, including follicular cell-derived thyroid cancers (TC). OPN is one of the gene products aberrantly expressed in TC, but the contribution of each OPN isoform (OPNi), named as OPNa, OPNb and OPNc, is currently unknown. This study aims to analyze the expression profile of OPNi in TC tissue samples, correlate its expression ...

Context: Little is known about the frequency of key mutations in thyroid cancer metastases and its relationship with the primary tumor genotype.Objectives: To evaluate the frequency of TERT promoter (TERTp), BRAF and NRAS mutations in metastatic thyroid carcinomas, analyzing primary thyroid tumors, lymph node metastases (LNM) and distant metastases.Material and Methods: Mutation analysis was performed in 437 tissue samples from 204...

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 feature...

Objective: One of the hallmarks of cancer is its unlimited replicative potential. Recently, telomerase promoter (TERTp) mutations were presented as novel mechanism for telomerase re-activation/expression. Due to this fact, it was our objective to study pancreatic endocrine tumours (PET) and related cell lines, to determine if TERTp mutations were present.Design: We performed characterization of the TERTp in a series of 55 PETs and three common PET cell l...

Context: Telomerase promoter mutations (TERT) were recently described in follicular cell-derived thyroid carcinomas (FCDTC) and seem to be more prevalent in aggressive cancers.Objectives: We aimed to evaluate the frequency of TERT promoter mutations in thyroid lesions and to investigate the prognostic significance of such mutations in a large cohort of patients with differentiated thyroid carcinomas (DTC).<p class="abstext"...