Inclusion Criteria

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

- Diagnosis of thyroid cancer meeting ≥ 1 of the following criteria:

- Progressive or recurrent disease

- Metastatic disease

- Unresectable disease

- Meeting any of the following thyroid cancer subtypes:

- Differentiated thyroid cancer (i.e., papillary, follicular, or Hurthle cell
disease) that is radio-iodine refractory

- Undifferentiated thyroid cancer (i.e., anaplastic disease)

- Medullary thyroid cancer

- Must have received prior everolimus or other mTOR inhibitor therapy

- Patients with history of brain metastasis who are neurologically stable following
definitive radiation and/or surgery and do not require corticosteroids allowed

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

- Karnofsky performance score 70-100%

- ANC ≥ 1,500/mm^³

- Platelet count ≥ 100,000/mm³

- Hemoglobin ≥ 5.6 mmol/L

- Serum bilirubin ≤ 1.5 times upper limit of normal (ULN)

- ALT and AST ≤ 2.5 times ULN (≤ 5 times ULN for known liver metastases)

- Serum creatinine ≤ 2 times ULN

- Negative pregnancy test

- No other malignancy, except nonmelanoma skin cancer, carcinoma in situ of the cervix,
or a malignancy diagnosed and with no current evidence of malignancy within the past
2 years

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

- See Disease Characteristics