Trial Information

Biomarkers in Thyroid Cancer

This protocol requires the collection of blood (5 ml), fine-needle aspirate biopsies (FNAB),
and post-surgical thyroid cancer tissue. The post surgical tissue includes fresh-frozen
tissue that is considered waste and in excess of that required for pathologic diagnosis, and
archived formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue (FFPE). The blood will be used as a
substrate for assessing known markers, including microRNA expression patterns that may be
useful to predict disease and thyroid cancer morphotype. The FNABs will be used to screen
the potential of markers for pre-operative diagnosis. The post-surgical fresh-frozen thyroid
cancer tissue will be used to isolate DNA and RNA in order to assess somatic mutations (RAS
and PAX8/PPAR-gamma rearrangement) and messenger RNA, and microRNA expression patterns. The
FFPE tissue will be used to obtain H&E and unstained slides to validate results using
immunohistochemistry. The goal of these studies is to define molecular markers that will
accurately distinguish benign from malignant disease and the multiple thyroid cancer
phenotypes. Current methods of distinguishing benign from malignant disease requires a
detailed post-surgical analysis and no known markers have yet been identified to reliably
differentiate the multiple thyroid cancer morphotypes.