Visit our Expo - Redox and Inflammation signaling 2012

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY OF THYROID CANCER
Detours, V., Delys, L., Hebrant, A., Weiss, D., Maenhaut, C., Dumont, J.E.
IRIBHM, University of Brussels, School of Medicine, Campus Erasme, B - 1070
Brussels.
Thyroid tumors are interesting for several reasons :
1) there are several well defined tumors from benign to very malignant, some former
evolving in the latter
2) the primary cause of the majority of these tumors is known
3) the signal transduction pathways involved have been well studied
4) there are good in vivo and in vitro models.
The types, pathogeneses of the various tumors are described.
Gene expression has been studied in human tumors, in mice transgenic models and in
vitro models (primary cultures of human and dog thyroid cells, human cancer cell lines). The
comparison of the results on the various models allows to draw several general conclusions on
the evolution in vitro of all lines, the role of negative feedback in tumorigenesis and the
importance of taking into account cell populations in the interpretation of results of
microarray studies on solid tumors. A pathogenic scheme of the evolution of papillary
carcinomas into anaplastic carcinomas is presented.
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