Wirth Discusses What’s on the Horizon in Thyroid Cancer Research

Lori J. Wirth, MD, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and medical director of the Center for Head and Neck Cancers at Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses some of the emerging trends and developments that are on the horizon in the thyroid cancer space.

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0:09 | In terms of emerging trends and developments in the field of thyroid cancer research, there is a lot going on. It really is an exciting time. We have talked about precision medicine, and we are going to continue to make progress in precision medicine [and] targeted therapy for patients with advanced disease. I think we are also going to make progress in the neoadjuvant setting. Perhaps with neoadjuvant treatment, bringing in highly effective drugs earlier into the course of the disease process, maybe we will be curing more patients with thyroid cancer, so I am really excited about that.

0:52 | I also think that we are going to be learning more about applying immunotherapy in advanced thyroid cancer. While there is not a big role for many of our patients with advanced lung cancer with our current immunotherapy strategies, we are going to figure that out in the coming years. I am quite confident of that.

1:17 | Cellular therapies are [also] being investigated. There are not a lot of clinical trials right now that are underway with cellular therapies but here are a couple. Thyroid cancer is a good setting for studying cellular therapies. The thyroid gland is typically ablated in patients with thyroid cancer, so we do not have to worry about some collateral damage to the normal thyroid tissue from [chimeric antigen receptor] T-cell therapy that you might need to worry about in targeting other solid tumors. Then, we have cancer-specific antigens that are targetable with cellular therapies as well. I think that we are going to be seeing advances in that field in the coming years.