Endocrine Abstracts

Objectives: The worldwide incidence of thyroid cancer (TC) is increasing at an alarming rate in the last decades and environmental pollution has been suggested to be involved in this rise. Some environmental pollutants, namely endocrine disruptive chemicals (EDCs), have been linked to endocrine system disruption, including thyroid dysfunction, and increased risk of cancer. Among EDCs, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are widely used in many industrial and consumer pr...

Thyroid cancer is the most common type of endocrine tumor and reaches the peak of incidence between the age of twenty and fifty years. It has 4-fold higher prevalence in females than males, suggesting that estrogens and their receptors could be involved in thyroid cancer pathogenesis. Previous studies demonstrated allosteric interference operated by G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) to molecules structurally similar to the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) receptor (T...

Background: The use of prophylactic central neck dissection, especially for low-risk differentiated thyroid cancer, is still very variable from center to center. Obviously, central dissection does allow more complete staging of cancer, including identification of metastases not detectable on preoperative ultrasound. However, it could lead to higher risk of hypoparathyroidism. Above all, it is not entirely clear whether the identification of metastases of the central compartmen...

Objectives: Molecular techniques are becoming increasingly important for the management of thyroid nodules. In particular, next-generation sequencing (NGS) can assess multiple predictive biomarkers simultaneously, enabling more accurate pre-operative risk stratification for patients with indeterminate fine-needle aspirates and identifying specific molecular alterations for targeted therapy in patients affected by advanced, radioactive iodine refractory carcinomas. To meet thes...

Objectives: Well differentiated thyroid cancers (WDTC) are generally sensitive to first line treatments or eventually to tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). However, a part of WDTC together with poorly differentiated (PDTC) and anaplastic (ATC) thyroid cancers are particularly aggressive and refractory to all treatments, TKIs included. Since TKIs resistance is proven to be related with the presence of TP53 mutations in other tumours, and TP53 alterations are f...

Objectives: Differentiated TCs are generally sensitive to first line treatments and tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). However, part of them along with undifferentiated TC, namely Anaplastic (ATC) and Poorly Differentiated (PDTC), are aggressive and show refractoriness to tyrosine-kinase inhibitors (TKIs) treatments. A correlation between resistance to TKIs and inactivating TP53 mutations was proven in TC by our group, consistent with data obtained in other tumors. To...

Background: Familial papillary or follicular thyroid carcinoma is a rare, nonmedullary thyroid carcinoma characterized by the presence of the disease in two or more first-degree relatives. With the worldwide increasing rate of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) in the recent years, the familial form of the disease (FNMTC) has also become more common than previously reported, however remains less well described clinical entity. Here we report a case of PTC in identical twins.</p...

Objective: Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) is non-receptor tyrosine kinase that has been shown to affect cell motility, adhesion, invasion, cell survival, proliferation and de-differentiation. Its increased expression has been reported for various types of malignancies and is associated with cancer progression. However, there are less information regarding its posttranslational form, phosphorylated at Tyrosine 397 (pY397-FAK), which represents a key event for complete protein acti...

Introduction: Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a malignant thyroid tumor originating from parafollicular C-cells. Most of MTCs (75%) are sporadic while remaining are hereditary. The hereditary form of MTC is a consequence of the mutation of the proto-oncogene RET (Rearranged During Transfection). Somatic mutations of the RET gene are also present in 40%-70% of the sporadic form of MTC (sMTC). Somatic mutations are also observed in the RAS genes and very rarely in the BRAF ...