Papillary thyroid carcinoma: New research

In the presentation "Impact of Radioactive Iodine on Survival in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma," Paritosh Suman, M.D. and colleagues from North Shore University Health System (Evanston, IL), explore the benefit of (RAI) treatment following surgery to remove the thyroid in patients with PTC, and whether survival benefit relates to tumor size. In a retrospective study of nearly 285,000 patients treated over 13 years, with a mean follow-up of 7 years, the authors found that 47% of patients had RAI therapy and it showed a small but statistically significant survival benefit regardless of the tumor size.

Carrie Lubitz, M.D., M.P.H., Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), and coauthors previously described a novel blood-based assay for detecting the V600E mutation in the BRAF gene in patients with melanoma. The BRAFV600E mutation is the most common genetic alteration in patients with PTC and is associated with a poorer prognosis, higher risk of metastasis and mortality, and resistance to RAI therapy. In the presentation "Detection of Circulating BRAFV600E in Patients with Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma," Lubitz et al. used the assay to measure circulating BRAFV600E levels in blood samples from patients with PTC and compared the results to conventional BRAFV600E assays. Circulating BRAFV600E levels were detectable in the blood of PTC patients, suggesting the feasibility of using the assay for diagnosis, post-operative surveillance, and to monitor treatment response to BRAF inhibitors.

Carmelo Nucera, M.D., Ph.D., Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston, MA) and colleagues discovered a large non-coding RNA (LincRNA) neighboring the thyroid peroxidase (TPO) gene that is present in significantly lower numbers in BRAFV600E-positive PTC tissue samples than in normal thyroid tissue. The LincRNA is specifically associated with thyroid tissue compared to other human tissues or cell types. The authors propose that the LincRNA might have an important role in regulating iodine metabolism associated gene expression and could serve as a biomarker for monitoring patients undergoing targeted therapies and for early diagnosis of BRAFV600E-PTC. They describe their findings in the presentation "Identification of Iodine Metabolism-Associated Large Non-coding RNA (LincRNA) Differentially Expressed in BRAFV600E-postivie Papillary Thyroid Cancer Versus Normal Thyroid Tissue."

"The identification of new circulating markers, if validated, should improve both the diagnosis and longitudinal follow-up of patients with papillary thyroid cancer," says Robert C. Smallridge, M.D. President Elect of the ATA.