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Review
. 2019 Feb 28;16(3):450-460.
doi: 10.7150/ijms.29935. eCollection 2019.

Papillary Thyroid Cancer: Genetic Alterations and Molecular Biomarker Investigations

Mardiaty Iryani Abdullah  1   2 , Sarni Mat Junit  1 , Khoon Leong Ng  3 , Jaime Jacqueline Jayapalan  4 , Barani Karikalan  5 , Onn Haji Hashim  1   4
Affiliations
Review

Papillary Thyroid Cancer: Genetic Alterations and Molecular Biomarker Investigations

Mardiaty Iryani Abdullah et al. Int J Med Sci. .

Abstract

Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) is the most prevalent form of malignancy among all cancers of the thyroid. It is also one of the few cancers with a rapidly increasing incidence. PTC is usually contained within the thyroid gland and generally biologically indolent. Prognosis of the cancer is excellent, with less than 2% mortality at 5 years. However, more than 25% of patients with PTC developed a recurrence during a long term follow-up. The present article provides an updated condensed overview of PTC, which focuses mainly on the molecular alterations involved and recent biomarker investigations.

Keywords: biomarker; diagnostics; genetic signature; molecular alteration; papillary thyroid cancer.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interest exists.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Classification of thyroid tumours. *There are 15 variants of papillary thyroid carcinoma but only the top 6 listed variants are included in this illustration ; FT-UMP, Follicular tumour of uncertain malignant potential; WDT-UMP, Well-differentiated tumour of uncertain malignant potential; NIFTP, Non-invasive follicular thyroid neoplasm with papillary nuclear features; CASTLE, Carcinoma showing thymus-like differentiation/intrathyroid epithelial thymoma; PNSTs, Peripheral nerve sheath tumour.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Oncogenic activation of MAPK pathway. The pathway is triggered by binding of growth factor (GF) to a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK), which activates the RAS, BRAF, MEK and ERK phosphorylation cascade. MEK: MAPK kinase; ERK: extracellular-signal-regulated kinase.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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