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Monitoring the secretome of advanced thyroid cancers for metastatic markers

People Involved

Dr Andrew Riley

Mr James England

Dr Vicky Green

Project Description

Aim
To identify potential biomarkers of thyroid cancer aggressiveness and metastasis.

Background
Despite differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) typically presenting as a localised and highly treatable disease with an excellent 10-year survival rate (~90%), up to 15% of patients develop distant metastases - the most important prognostic marker for poor long-term survival (Mazzaferri & Massoll, 2002; Verburg et al., 2018). Liang et al., (2011) used immunohistochemistry to discover differential expression of 6 proteins, most notably VEGF-C and bFGF, in metastatic thyroid cancer tissue compared to non-metastatic. Furthermore, the less abundant, more aggressive, poorly differentiated thyroid cancers lose the ability to uptake radioiodine, and thus are less responsive to post-surgical adjuvant treatment; identification of a robust panel of systemic markers of aggressiveness and metastases would improve the clinician’s ability to predict and monitor disease progression.
We will employ a well-established microculture method capable of maintaining precision-cut, live, human thyroid cancer tissue (Riley et al., 2017) to allow detailed assessment of the thyroid tumour secretome. One significant advantage of this proposed method is the ability to assess ex vivo thyroid material independently, without systemic contaminants.
Ethical approval
Benign and malignant human thyroid tissue has been obtained from a series of 40 newly presenting patients during thyroidectomy under ethical approval and following written, informed consent (Newcastle LREC; 15/NE/0412 and HEY NHS trust R&D; R1925).

Hypothesis
We expect to identify changes in expression of a panel of markers comparing benign to localised malignant and metastatic thyroid tissue.

Status Project Complete
Value £4,993.00
Project Dates May 20, 2019 - Sep 18, 2019

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