Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is a rare and highly fatal cancer with the worst prognosis of all thyroid carcinoma (TC) histological subtypes and no standard treatment. In recent years, the explosion of investigations on ATC-targeted agents has provided a new treatment strategy for this malignant condition, and a review of these studies is warranted. We conducted a comprehensive literature search for ATC-targeted drug studies and compiled a summary of their efficacy and adverse effects (AEs) to provide new insights. Multiple clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy and safety of dabrafenib in combination with trametinib for the treatment of ATC, but vemurafenib and NTRK inhibitors showed limited clinical responses. We found that the previously valued therapeutic effect of lenvatinib may be unsatisfactory; combining tyrosine kinase (TK) inhibitors (TKIs) with other agents results in a higher rate of clinical benefit. In addition, specific medications, including RET inhibitors, mTOR inhibitors, CDK4/6 inhibitors, and Combretastatin A4-phosphate (CA4P), offer tremendous therapeutic potential. The AEs reported for all agents are relatively numerous but largely manageable clinically. More clinical trials are expected to further confirm the effectiveness and safety of these targeted drugs for ATC.
NUT carcinoma is a rare, highly lethal cancer characterized with the rearrangement of the nuclear protein in testis (NUT) gene on chromosome 15q14, which primarily occurs in the midline organs. Primary pulmonary NUT carcinoma (NC) lacks characteristic clinical manifestations, which leads to the high rate of misdiagnose and nonstandard treatment. To date, fewer than one hundred cases have been reported worldwide. Here, a comprehensive literature search involving a total of 35 articles with 55 patients was conducted in this paper. We reviewed and analyzed the associated clinical and pathological characteristics, the efficacy of various treatment options and the prognosis. Pulmonary NC mainly occurred in middle young-aged men (median age, 36) with no smoking history (2:1) and would present with symptoms of cough (63.6%), dyspnea (29.5%), chest pain (18.2%) and hemoptysis (18.2%). The initial imaging frequently revealed large and irregular lesions in the lower lobe (46.5%) of the left or right lungs; lymph node metastasis was also prevalent (91.9%). A focal squamous differentiation with abrupt keratinization often occurred in the undifferentiated or poorly differentiated (93.75%) tumor cells, with abundant necrosis and numerous neutrophils infiltrated. The mean overall survival (OS) in patients of this malignant disease was 6.21 months, and the median OS was 4.4 months. According to our results, this disease is sensitive to radiotherapy, and chemoradiotherapy (either concurrent chemoradiotherapy or sequential chemoradiotherapy) was the most efficient therapeutic regimen to prolong the OS of patients with pulmonary NC.
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