Publications by authors named "Fagin J"

The 2022 World Health Organization classification introduced the term high-grade follicular cell-derived nonanaplastic thyroid carcinoma (HGFCTC) to define invasive/infiltrative nonanaplastic thyroid carcinoma with high-grade features, including poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma and high-grade differentiated thyroid carcinoma. Our objectives were to compare clinicopathological characteristics, oncologic outcomes, and mutation profiles among HGFCTC subgroups to better inform prognostication and treatment. In this single-center, retrospective cohort study of 252 patients who had surgery for HGFCTC from 1986 to 2020, we categorized HGFCTC and its related entity, "encapsulated noninvasive neoplasms of follicular cells with high-grade features," into five subgroups: (A) encapsulated noninvasive, (B) encapsulated with capsular invasion only (minimally invasive), (C) encapsulated angioinvasive with focal vascular invasion (VI), (D) encapsulated angioinvasive with extensive VI, and (E) infiltrative tumors.

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Thyroid nodules are a common endocrine condition with an increasing incidence over the decades. Data-independent acquisition has been widely utilized in discovery proteomics to identify disease biomarkers and therapeutic targets. To analyze the thyroid disease-related proteome in a high-throughput, reproducible and reliable manner, we introduce thyroid-specific peptide spectral libraries.

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Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is a clinically aggressive malignancy with a dismal prognosis. Combined BRAF/MEK inhibition offers significant therapeutic benefit in patients with -mutant ATCs. However, relapses are common and overall survival remains poor.

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  • The study investigates the effectiveness of Fluorine 18-labelled tetrafluoroborate ([F]TFB) as an imaging alternative to iodine for assessing metastatic thyroid cancer and potential radioiodine treatment success.
  • Five patients participated in the research, receiving both [F]TFB and iodine imaging on the same day. Results showed that [F]TFB identified 58% of lesions compared to 91% for iodine imaging, indicating its lower sensitivity.
  • The conclusion drawn highlights that [F]TFB did not successfully predict iodine uptake in patients undergoing redifferentiation therapy, raising questions about its reliability for other treatment cases or in untreated patients.
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  • The clinical development of farnesyltransferase inhibitors (FTIs) for HRAS-mutant tumors shows varied responses due to co-occurring mutations and their impact on sensitivity to FTIs.
  • Targeted sequencing revealed that HRAS-mutant cancers frequently exhibit mutations in the MAPK, PI3K, or RTK pathways, more so than KRAS and NRAS mutants, with specific alterations like BRAF, NF1, PTEN, and PIK3CA being prevalent.
  • Research indicated that while certain comutations confer resistance to FTIs, combining FTIs with MEK inhibitors may enhance sensitivity in HRAS-mutant tumors, presenting a potential treatment strategy.
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RBM10 modulates transcriptome-wide cassette exon splicing. Loss-of-function mutations are enriched in thyroid cancers with distant metastases. Analysis of transcriptomes and genes mis-spliced by RBM10 loss showed pro-migratory and RHO/RAC signaling signatures.

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Background: Diffuse sclerosing papillary thyroid carcinoma (DSPTC) is an aggressive histopathologic subtype of papillary thyroid carcinoma. Correlation between genotype and phenotype has not been comprehensively described. This study aimed to describe the genomic landscape of DSPTC comprehensively using next-generation sequencing (NGS), analyze the prognostic implications of different mutations, and identify potential molecular treatment targets.

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Aims: Papillary thyroid carcinoma, tall cell subtype (PTC-TC) is a potentially aggressive histotype. The latest World Health Organisation (WHO) classification introduced a novel class of tumours; namely, high-grade differentiated thyroid carcinoma (HGDTC), characterised by elevated mitotic count and/or necrosis, which can exhibit a tall cell phenotype (HGDTC-TC).

Methods And Results: We analysed the clinical outcomes in a large retrospective cohort of 1456 consecutive thyroid carcinomas with a tall cell phenotype, including PTC-TC and HGDTC-TC.

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Genomic profiling is now available for risk stratification of cytologically indeterminate thyroid nodules (ITNs). Mutations in genes (, , ) are found in both benign and malignant thyroid nodules, although isolated mutations are rarely associated with aggressive tumors. Because the long-term behavior of -mutant ITNs is not well understood, most undergo immediate surgery.

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The prognostic importance of and mutations and their relationship to clinicopathologic parameters and outcomes in medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) need to be clarified. A multicenter retrospective cohort study was performed utilizing data from 290 patients with MTC. The molecular profile was determined and associations were examined with clinicopathologic data and outcomes.

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  • The understanding of the molecular causes of thyroid cancer was limited until the late 1980s, but significant historical discoveries have helped illuminate its genetic foundations.
  • Advances in technologies like nucleic acid sequencing and insights into cancer biology and thyroid development have been crucial in decoding the molecular genetics of thyroid cancer.
  • While key genetic drivers of common thyroid cancers are now identified and influence diagnosis and treatment, challenges remain in understanding the complex interactions within thyroid cancer ecosystems that affect their behavior and treatment responses.
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The clinical development of farnesyltransferase inhibitors (FTI) for -mutant tumors showed mixed responses dependent on cancer type. Co-occurring mutations may affect response. We aimed to uncover cooperative genetic events specific to -mutant tumors and study their effect on FTI sensitivity.

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Unlabelled: Mutations in the promoter of the telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene are the paradigm of a cross-cancer alteration in a noncoding region. TERT promoter mutations (TPM) are biomarkers of poor prognosis in cancer, including thyroid tumors. TPMs enhance TERT transcription, which is otherwise silenced in adult tissues, thus reactivating a bona fide oncoprotein.

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The genomic simplicity of differentiated cancers derived from thyroid follicular cells offers unique insights into how oncogenic drivers impact tumour phenotype. Essentially, the main oncoproteins in thyroid cancer activate nodes in the receptor tyrosine kinase-RAS-BRAF pathway, which constitutively induces MAPK signalling to varying degrees consistent with their specific biochemical mechanisms of action. The magnitude of the flux through the MAPK signalling pathway determines key elements of thyroid cancer biology, including differentiation state, invasive properties and the cellular composition of the tumour microenvironment.

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  • The study introduces a new dosimetry method using biomarker-based analysis to determine effective radioactive iodine treatment levels for patients with metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer (mDTC), relying on single-timepoint imaging of tumor uptake through I PET.
  • Researchers conducted quantitative PET scans on 208 mDTC lesions from 21 patients to measure individual lesion radiation doses and created a predictive model showing that a 48-hour SUV measurement is the best predictor for the radiation dose each lesion receives.
  • The findings demonstrate significant variability in radiation doses among lesions, suggesting a median dose of 22,000 cGy, and highlight the practicality of using I-PET imaging to personalize treatment plans for mDTC patients based on specific metrics obtained from just a single
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Objective: Exposure to therapeutic radioactive iodine (RAI) is associated with an increased relative risk of myeloid malignancies. Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) is a precursor state that can be detected in blood of healthy individuals decades before overt development of leukemia. We prospective studied the effects of RAI on CH.

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  • The study investigates why some metastatic thyroid cancer patients respond well to radioiodine (RAI) treatment while others do not, focusing on genetic factors that might explain this difference.
  • Exceptional responders (ER) to RAI show specific mutations that activate the MAPK pathway differently than nonresponders (NR), who are often associated with a mutation (BRAFV600E) that makes them less responsive.
  • The research suggests that analyzing the molecular profiles of thyroid cancers could help predict which patients are likely to benefit from RAI therapy based on their tumor characteristics.
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Mutations in the promoter of the telomerase reverse transcriptase ( ) gene are the paradigm of a cross-cancer alteration in a non-coding region. promoter mutations (TPMs) are biomarkers of poor prognosis in several tumors, including thyroid cancers. TPMs enhance transcription, which is otherwise silenced in adult tissues, thus reactivating a oncoprotein.

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Therapy resistance is a major challenge in the treatment of cancer. Here, we performed CRISPR-Cas9 screens across a broad range of therapies used in acute myeloid leukemia to identify genomic determinants of drug response. Our screens uncover a selective dependency on RNA splicing factors whose loss preferentially enhances response to the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax.

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Background: Inactivation of the Hippo pathway promotes Yap nuclear translocation, enabling execution of a transcriptional program that induces tissue growth. Genetic lesions of Hippo intermediates only identify a minority of cancers with illegitimate YAP activation. Yap has been implicated in resistance to targeted therapies, but the mechanisms by which YAP may impact adaptive resistance to MAPK inhibitors are unknown.

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Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most frequent histological subtype of thyroid cancers (TC), and BRAF genetic alteration is found in 60% of this endocrine cancer. This oncogene is associated with poor prognosis, resistance to radioiodine therapy, and tumor progression. Histological follow-up by anatomo-pathologists revealed that two-thirds of surgically-removed thyroids do not present malignant lesions.

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The change in size of the papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) nodule during active surveillance has traditionally been characterized as either stable, increasing, or decreasing based on changes in maximal tumor diameter or tumor volume. More recently, it has been observed that the changes in tumor size observed during observation are more complex with tumor volume kinetic patterns that can be characterized either as stable (Pattern I), early increase in volume (Pattern II), later increase in volume (Pattern III), early increase in volume followed by stability (Pattern IV), stability followed by an increase in volume (Pattern V), or a decrease in tumor volume (Pattern VI). The frequency, time course, and clinical correlates of these six tumor volume kinetic patterns were analyzed in a cohort of 483 patients with low-risk PTC up to 1.

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  • - Accurate understanding of genetic ancestry is essential for addressing cancer disparities, and new methods using clinical sequencing panels allow for better integration of ancestry analysis in diagnostic settings.
  • - In a study of over 45,000 cancer patients, researchers found that ancestry influences the frequency of genetic mutations, revealing some known and novel associations, as well as differences in clinically actionable alterations.
  • - Despite similar rates of key genetic changes by ancestry group, a lower percentage of patients with African ancestry had actionable alterations compared to those with European ancestry, highlighting inequities in how precision oncology serves different populations.
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Hürthle cell carcinomas (HCCs) display two exceptional genotypes: near-homoplasmic mutation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and genome-wide loss of heterozygosity (gLOH). To understand the phenotypic consequences of these genetic alterations, we analyzed genomic, metabolomic, and immunophenotypic data of HCC and other thyroid cancers. Both mtDNA mutations and profound depletion of citrate pools are common in HCC and other thyroid malignancies, suggesting that thyroid cancers are broadly equipped to survive tricarboxylic acid cycle impairment, whereas metabolites in the reduced form of NADH-dependent lysine degradation pathway were elevated exclusively in HCC.

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