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Review
. 2014 Nov;19(11):1148-55.
doi: 10.1634/theoncologist.2014-0182. Epub 2014 Sep 26.

Novel approaches in anaplastic thyroid cancer therapy

Kun-Tai Hsu  1 , Xiao-Min Yu  1 , Anjon W Audhya  1 , Juan C Jaume  1 , Ricardo V Lloyd  1 , Shigeki Miyamoto  1 , Tomas A Prolla  1 , Herbert Chen  2
Affiliations
Review

Novel approaches in anaplastic thyroid cancer therapy

Kun-Tai Hsu et al. Oncologist. 2014 Nov.

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Anaplastic thyroid cancer; Clinical trials; Histone deacetylase inhibitors; Kinase inhibitors; Notch; Thyroid cancer.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclosures of potential conflicts of interest may be found at the end of this article.

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