Background: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is nearly always fatal. Large studies on ATC are exceedingly rare. We aimed to study the clinical, genotypic, and histologic characteristics of ATC in the largest retrospective cohort of ATC to date. Methods: Three hundred sixty patients with ATC from two tertiary centers were studied. Molecular testing was performed in 126 cases including 107 using next-generation sequencing. Results: The median patients' age was 68 years. Differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) was present in 208 cases (58%), the most common being papillary carcinoma (n = 150). The 1-, 2-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival (OS) was 36%, 17%, 13%, and 11%, respectively. On univariate analysis, age, resectability, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, margin status, encapsulation, gross residual disease, gross extrathyroidal extension, percentage, and size of ATC in the primary tumor predicted OS ( p < 0.05). Age, resectability, chemotherapy, and gross residual disease were independent prognostic factors in the entire cohort, while gross residual disease was the only independent predictor of OS in patients who had resection of their tumor. BRAF, RAS, TERT promoter, TP53, PIK3CA, E1F1AX, and PTEN mutations were detected in 45%, 24%, 75%, 63%, 18%, 14%, and 14% of ATC, respectively. Concomitant BRAF/RAS and TERT mutations were associated with worse outcome than mutation in only one of the genes. BRAF-mutated and RAS-mutated ATCs had similar frequency of nodal and distant metastasis. Twelve cases were pure squamous cell carcinoma, 60% of which carried BRAF V600E mutation and showed a similar OS to other ATCs. Conclusions: (i) Gross residual disease remains the most crucial indicator of outcome in ATC. (ii) Encapsulation, margin status, percentage, and size of ATC in the primary were prognostically relevant. (iii) Pure thyroid squamous cell carcinoma may be considered as ATC given a BRAF V600E genotype and similar outcome. (iv) In contrast to DTC, BRAF-mutated and RAS-mutated ATCs have similar metastatic spread. (v) Concomitant mutations of BRAF or RAS with TERT confer a worse prognosis.

No abstract

Background: Exosomes play crucial roles in regulating the crosstalk between normal and cancer cells in the tumor microenvironment, and in regulating cancer proliferation, migration and invasion through their cargo molecules. Methods: We analyzed the pro-invasiveness of exosomal circRNA-100,338 in HCC using the transwell invasion assay. The co-culture of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) and exosomes derived from HCC cell lines were used to evaluate the impact of HCC derived exosomes on HUVEC. Nude mice models were used to validate the findings in vitro. Clinically, quantitative RT-PCR was used to quantify the expression of serum exosomal circRNA-100,338 in HCC patients at both pre-surgery within one week and post-surgery within three weeks. Results: We aim to investigate the pro-invasive role of exosomal circRNA-100,338 in HCC metastasis. We for the first time demonstrated that circRNA-100,338 was highly expressed in both highly metastatic HCC cells and their secreted exosomes. The transwell invasion assay showed that the overexpression or knockdown of exosomal circRNA-100,338 significantly enhanced or reduced the invasive abilities of HCC cells. Subsequently, in vitro and in vivo assays showed that exosomal circRNA-100,338 affected the cell proliferation, angiogenesis, permeability, and vasculogenic mimicry (VM) formation ability of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC), and tumor metastasis. Furthermore, we also observed that the persistent high expression of exosomal circRNA-100,338 in serum of HCC patients who underwent curative hepatectomy may be a risk indicator of pulmonary metastasis and poor survival. Conclusions: Our findings indicated that metastatic ability of HCC cells could be enhanced by transferring exosomal circRNA-100,338 to recipient HUVECs, which could affect proangiogenic activity by regulating angiogenesis.

MicroRNAs have been implicated in regulating diverse cellular pathways. Emerging evidence indicates that miR-143 plays causal roles in cancer tumorigenesis as a tumor suppress gene; however, its role in prostate cancer tumorigenesis remains largely unknown. The aims of this study were to verify the effect of miR-143 on proliferation and migration abilities of prostate cancer cells. The expression level of miR-143 and its target gene KRAS were measured by realtime PCR and western blotting, respectively. Effects of miR-143 in cell proliferation, migration and chemosensitivity were evaluated by MTT assay, FACS cell cycle analysis, colony formation assay, and transwell migratory assay. Our results revealed an inverse correlation of expression between miR-143 and KRAS protein in prostate cancer samples (Pearson's correlation scatter plots: R = -0.707, P < 0.05). Moreover, over-expression of miR-143 in prostate cancer cells suppressed their proliferation and migration and increased their sensitivity to docetaxel by targeting EGFR/RAS/MAPK pathway. These findings suggest that miR-143 plays an important role in prostate cancer proliferation, migration and chemosensitivity by suppressing KRAS and subsequent inactivation of MAPK pathway, which provides a potential development of a new approach for the treatment of prostate cancer.

Our findings suggest that ubiquitous loss of miR-146a is a critical mechanism for overexpression of EGFR in CRPC, which is crucial to better understanding the pathogenesis of CRPC.

Poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma (PDTC) and anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) are aggressive thyroid tumors associated with a high mortality rate of 38-57 % and almost 100 % respectively. Several recent studies utilizing next generation sequencing techniques have shed lights on the molecular pathogenesis of these tumors, providing evidence to support a stepwise tumoral progression from well-differentiated to poorly differentiated, and finally to anaplastic thyroid carcinomas. While BRAF (V600E) and RAS mutations remain the main drivers in aggressive thyroid carcinoma, PDTC and ATC gains additional mutations, e.g., TERT promoter mutation, TP53 mutation, as well as frequent alterations in PIK3CA-PTEN-AKT-mTOR pathway, SWI-SNF complex, histomethyltransferases, and mismatch repair genes. RAS-mutated PDTCs are commonly associated with a histologic phenotype defined by Turin proposal, high frequency of distant metastasis, high thyroid differentiation score, and a RAS-like gene expression profile, whereas BRAF-mutated PDTCs are usually defined solely by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) criteria with a propensity for nodal metastasis and are less differentiated with a BRAF-like expression signature. Such demarcation is largely lost in ATC which is characterized by genomic complexity, heavy mutation burden, and profound undifferentiation. Additionally, several molecular events, e.g., EIF1AX mutation, mutation burden, and chromosome 1q gain in PDTCs, as well as EIF1AX mutation, chromosome 13q loss, and 20q gains in ATCs, may serve as adverse prognostic markers predicting poor clinical outcome.

The actin cross-linking protein filamin A reduces migration, invasion, and metastasis of breast cancer cells.

Stem cell factor (SCF) plays important roles in tumor growth and angiogenesis. However, its regulatory mechanism remains largely undefined. Here, we report that hypoxia upregulated the expression of SCF in MCF-7 breast cancer cells in both messenger RNA and protein levels. When hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1 alpha expression was knocked down by RNA interference, the MCF-7 cell expression of SCF was decreased significantly. Furthermore, the SCF receptor, c-kit phosphorylation was significantly strengthened by the condition culture media from hypoxic MCF-7 and MCF-7-c cells. The survival of A549 cells was more dependent on SCF under hypoxia. Analysis of SCF promoter 5'-flanking region revealed a potential hypoxia-response element (HRE; 5'-GCGTG-3') located at -68 to -64 relative to the transcriptional start site. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assay demonstrated that HIF-1 alpha directly bound to this region under normoxia, and this binding activity was significantly enhanced under hypoxia. Overexpression of HIF-1 alpha significantly upregulated the expression of luciferase reporter gene under control of the SCF promoters in both MCF-7 cells and human embryonic kidney 293 cells, but mutation of the HRE site completely blocked this effect. Epidermal growth factor was also able to enhance the SCF expression under normoxia in MCF-7 cells, which was dependent on HIF-1 alpha. Taken together, our data demonstrated that HIF-1 alpha was a key regulator of SCF expression in breast cancer cells. Hypoxia and epidermal growth factor receptor signal coexisted in the tumor microenvironment and might promote angiogenesis through HIF-1 alpha-mediated upregulation of SCF and other angiogenic factors.