Endocrine Abstracts

Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a rare neuroendocrine tumor arising from parafollicular C-cells. Nowadays different targeted therapies are available, directed mostly against the main genetic driver of MTC, RET, and against the common pro-oncogenic pathways of VEGF, EGFR and c-MYC. Despite this, an escape phenomenon has been observed with sudden disease progression during treatment, leaving surgery as the only curative treatment. The evaluation of pre and post treatment ge...

Thyroid cancer (TC) has one of the fastest increasing incidences worldwide and primarily involves papillary thyroid cancer (PTC). Cancer cells have numerous mechanisms that govern drug resistance, among which activation of multidrug resistance (MDR) genes encoding ABC efflux pumps plays an important role. Acquisition of drug resistance by TC cells is becoming a significant obstacle to effective therapy, leading to insensitivity to classical chemotherapeutics, but also to speci...

Undifferentiated thyroid carcinomas are extremely aggressive and currently lack effective treatment. Aberrant RAS-ERK signaling, triggered mainly by BRAF and RAS mutations, is responsible for the occurrence and progression of most thyroid carcinomas, which led to the clinical use of small kinase inhibitors targeting kinases of the pathway. The results were disappointing, because of the emergence of resistance and high-associated toxicity. A more specific approach, targeting si...

Objectives: The mortality in thyroid cancer (TC) is unacceptably high and novel immune based strategies are necessary, especially for cancers that are resistant to existing therapies. Recently, the receptor SIGLEC15 has been proposed as potential novel target in different cancers, but little is known about its exact function and regulation. Given its high expression in tumor associated macrophages and the high density of these cell in thyroid cancer makes this anti-inflammator...

TERT is the protein component of the telomerase enzyme and is overexpressed in many cancer types. The most well-known role for TERT is the regeneration of telomeres allowing the avoidance of senescence and the continued proliferation of stem and cancer cells. Recent studies have identified other roles for TERT in compartments outside the nucleus, in particular in mitochondria, with a protective role against endogenous and therapy-induced oxidative stress (OS). A small subset o...