Molecular characteristics of papillary thyroid carcinomas without BRAF mutation or RET/PTC rearrangement: relationship with clinico-pathological features.

About 60-70% of papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTC) present a BRAF(T1799A) gene mutation or a rearrangement of RET gene (RET/PTC). In this study, we examined whether PTC without BRAF(T1799A) mutation and without RET/PTC rearrangement named PTC-ga(-) were distinguishable from PTC-ga(+) (with one or the other gene alteration) on the basis of gene expression characteristics. We analyzed the mutational state of 116 PTC and we compared gene expression profiles of PTC-ga(+) and PTC-ga(-) from data of a 200 gene macroarray and quantitative PCR.