THYROID CANCERS

We present a case of a 49-year-old woman with a pT4aN1B papillary thyroid cancer who underwent radical thyroidectomy with bilateral neck dissection and RAI I-131 ablation, but poorly tolerated TSH suppression therapy due to tachycardia. Rising thyroglobulin levels and lymph node mapping showed recurrent/progressive disease in the thyroid bed.

Randolph says pre-operative loss of voice tracks "robustly" with invasive thyroid cancer, and being aware of this issue before surgery helps surgeons better treat their patients.

Anaplastic thyroid cancer is an extremely aggressive form of cancer that cannot be cured by surgery and has a median survival of about 6 months. The malignancy normally occurs in patients over the age of 60, and there is not a standard of care, according to John A. Copland III, PhD, professor, Cancer Biology, Mayo Clinic.

Asa says one of the most common mutations in subtypes of thyroid cancer is the BRAF mutation. She adds that while the mutation is common, a good number of patients do not respond to BRAF-targeted therapies, hinting that these subtypes are more complex than previously thought.

Muller says if this common antigen does exist, an immune therapy could hypothetically be developed to combat it and essentially combat both breast and thyroid cancer.

Dadu says immunotherapies could afford patients with thyroid cancer an elongated progression free survival, potentially less toxicities, and most importantly an extensive overall survival benefit.

Patients who elect to undergo immediate surgery for low-risk thyroid-related microcarcinoma may be subjecting themselves to unnecessary risk, according to findings from a large study in Japan.

The presence or absence of certain serum-free fatty acids could be an excellent diagnostic tool to differentiate between patients with either benign thyroid diseases or thyroid cancer.

Danae Delivanis, MD, endocrinologist, Mayo Clinic, on the use of pembrolizumab and nivolumab in the treatment of metastatic melanoma.

A research team from Michigan Technological University recently discovered two major biomarkers used in the detection of thyroid cancer may be inaccurate in diagnosing the disease.

R. Michael Tuttle, MD, professor of Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, talks about the new horizons for radioactive iodine treatment in thyroid cancer.

The kinase inhibitors sorafenib (Nexavar) and lenvatinib (Lenvima) have significantly altered the treatment paradigm for patients with advanced radioactive iodine (RAI)-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer in both older and younger populations, with combination strategies hoping to further build upon this success.

Paul Walfish, MD, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto School of Medicine, senior consult Mount Sinai Hospital discusses programmed death ligand 1 (PD-1) expression in aggressive metastatic papillary thyroid cancer.

A Japanese research team attempted to standardize therapy for anaplastic thyroid carcinoma by assessing the feasibility and efficacy of weekly paclitaxel administration.

A comprehensive review of patients receiving pembrolizumab has found an incidence of abnormal thyroid function tests as high as 15%.

Investigators at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Toronto, Canada, have been working on a potential correlation for aggressiveness and/or disease-free survival in thyroid cancer patients.

Michael Tuttle, MD, endocrinologist Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK), discusses best management approaches to radioactive iodine treatment in patients with radioiodine avid distant metastases from differentiated thyroid cancer.

Researchers have posited that well-differentiated thyroid cancers harbor distinct molecular pathological profiles that may be useful as prognostic indicators of future aggressiveness.

The rising overall risk of all sizes of malignant thyroid cancer has made clinicians question whether or not sub-centimeter thyroid nodules should also be biopsied.

While medullary thyroid cancer is not common as other thyroid cancers, it does have a poorer prognosis than these more common forms of metastatic thyroid cancer.

Danae Delivanis, MD, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, Metabolism, and Nutrition at Mayo Clinic, discusses pembrolizumab-induced thyroiditis in patients with cancer.

BRAF V600E is essential to the survival of many tumors and has been the focus of targeted therapeutics like a new BRAF V600E-selective inhibitor, which has been used for papillary thyroid carcinomas.

Keith Bible, MD, PhD, Mayo Clinic professor of oncology goes into detail about the current status of using VEGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors to treat thyroid cancer.

Cabozantinib, an oral multikinase inhibitor, showed promise as second- or third-line therapy in patients with advanced differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC).

Dr. Sylvia Asa, MD, PhD, pathologist with the Toronto General Hospital/Research Institute (UHN) and a professor at the University of Toronto, discusses genotyping and the role it can play in diagnosing and selecting targeted treatments for thyroid cancer.

Dr. Nicole O. Vietor presented a report assessing practice discordances related to previously published guidelines published from the American Thyroid Association and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.

Patients in a lenvatinib treatment arm with radioiodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer and certain metastasis experienced a much better overall median progression-free survival compared with a placebo arm.

Abstracts highlighting the latest clinical data on lenvatinib are expected at the 2015 European Cancer Congress in Vienna, Austria.

Matthew H. Taylor, MD, Oregon Health and Science University, discusses the toxicities and impact of lenvatinib in the SELECT trial, which treated patients with 131I-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer.

Marcia S. Brose, MD, PhD, discusses the SELECT trial, which looks at lenvatinib for patients with 131I-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer.