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. 2025 Jun;12(2):295-300.
doi: 10.1007/s40801-025-00493-y. Epub 2025 May 16.

Impact of Modern Systemic Therapies on Survival in Patients with Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer: A Single-Center Retrospective Cohort Review

Austin Luong  1 , Darin Poei  1 , Lydia Chow  2 , Ming Li  3 , Qi Nie  3 , Trevor Angell  4 , Liyang Tang  5 , Robert Hsu  2 , Jacob Thomas  6
Affiliations

Impact of Modern Systemic Therapies on Survival in Patients with Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer: A Single-Center Retrospective Cohort Review

Austin Luong et al. Drugs Real World Outcomes. 2025 Jun.

Abstract

Background: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is a highly aggressive cancer historically associated with a median survival of about 5 months. Recent advances in tumor genomic testing have identified targetable BRAF mutations in about 35-40% of ATC cases and have shown high levels of programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) expression in ATC. These observations have led to clinical trials showing favorable outcomes with targeted therapy and immunotherapy for ATC.

Objective: We aimed to evaluate treatments and outcomes of patients diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer treated at our institution in order to determine the impact of targeted therapy and immunotherapy.

Methods: A retrospective review of ATC patients at a single institution was performed. Data were collected from institutional electronic medical records, including demographic information, treatments administered, and outcomes including survival.

Results: A total of 28 patients were identified within the period under study. Systemic therapy was initiated in 61% of patients. The median overall survival for all patients was 7.3 months. There was a statistically significant improvement in overall survival for patients who received targeted therapy or immunotherapy compared to those who did not.

Conclusions: In this single-institution cohort of 28 patients with ATC, patients who received either targeted therapies or immunotherapy demonstrated markedly improved outcomes. Further clinical trials are required to determine the optimal systemic therapy for this patient population.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Funding: The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work. Conflict of Interest: Jacob Thomas has received consulting fees from Kura Oncology, Inc. and Coherus BioSciences, Inc. The remaining authors have no conflicts of interest to report. Ethics Approval: This research study was conducted retrospectively from data obtained for clinical purposes. We consulted extensively with the IRB of the University of Southern California, who determined that our study did not need ethical approval. An IRB official waiver of ethical approval was granted from the IRB of the University of Southern California. Consent to Participate: Not applicable. Consent for Publication: Not applicable. Availability of Data and Material: The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Code Availability: Not applicable. Authors’ Contributions: AL and JT conceptualized this article. Data curation and formal analysis were performed by AL, ML, QN, and JT. All authors contributed to the investigation, writing, reviewing, and editing of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Overall survival for the entire cohort of anaplastic thyroid carcinoma patients (top) as well as survival for patients based on systemic therapy received (bottom). Targeted therapy included dabrafenib, trametinib, and Lenvatinib. Immunotherapy drugs included pembrolizumab, ipilimumab, and nivolumab. Combination targeted/immunotherapy regimens included only Lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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