Open AccessNovel Approaches in Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer Therapy
Author(s) -
Hsu KunTai,
Yu XiaoMin,
Audhya Anjon W.,
Jaume Juan C.,
Lloyd Ricardo V.,
Miyamoto Shigeki,
Prolla Tomas A.,
Chen Herbert
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the oncologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.176
H-Index - 164
eISSN - 1549-490X
pISSN - 1083-7159
DOI - 10.1634/theoncologist.2014-0182
Subject(s) - medicine , anaplastic thyroid cancer , thyroid cancer , cancer therapy , oncology , thyroid , cancer
Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC), accounting for less than 2% of all thyroid cancer, is responsible for the majority of death from all thyroid malignancies and has a median survival of 6 months. The resistance of ATC to conventional thyroid cancer therapies, including radioiodine and thyroid‐stimulating hormone suppression, contributes to the very poor prognosis of this malignancy. This review will cover several cellular signaling pathways and mechanisms, including RET/PTC, RAS, BRAF, Notch, p53, and histone deacetylase, which are identified to play roles in the transformation and dedifferentiation process, and therapies that target these pathways. Lastly, novel approaches and agents involving the Notch1 pathway, nuclear factor κB, Trk‐fused gene, cancer stem‐like cells, mitochondrial mutation, and tumor immune microenvironment are discussed. With a better understanding of the biological process and treatment modality, the hope is to improve ATC outcome in the future.