Papillary thyroid carcinoma behavior: clues in the tumor microenvironment

We present the first evaluation of a large thyroid tumor cohort of 568 papillary thyroid carcinoma from The Cancer Genome Atlas that defines the key immune cell infiltrates within the tumor microenvironment that may be involved in aggressive tumor behavior

Kensey Bergdorf; Donna C Ferguson; Mitra Mehrad; Kim Ely; Thomas Stricker; Vivian L Weiss

2019

Scholarcy highlights

  • The incidence of thyroid malignancy in the United States is rapidly increasing, with thyroid cancer projected to be the fourth leading cancer diagnosis by 2030
  • We present the first evaluation of a large thyroid tumor cohort of 568 papillary thyroid carcinoma from The Cancer Genome Atlas that defines the key immune cell infiltrates within the tumor microenvironment that may be involved in aggressive tumor behavior
  • We find that the LGALS3/lymphocyte-activation gene 3 ratio was significantly higher in activated Dendritic cells high versus activated DC low, suggesting that this mechanism may contribute to an immune exclusion environment
  • Our study confirms previous reports that thyroid cancer immune infiltration is associated with BRAF mutations and adverse outcomes and expands upon these findings to identify specific immune cell subtypes associated with more aggressive tumor characteristics
  • The main immune cell types that are significantly associated with adverse PTC features across both deconvolution tools are macrophages, dendritic cells and neutrophils
  • These innate immune cells significantly correlate with markers of aggressive disease such as BRAF mutation, tall cell morphology, increased tumor stage and lymph node metastases
  • We present a computational evaluation of immune cell infiltrates in papillary thyroid carcinoma and show that the presence of certain cell types, dendritic cells and neutrophils, strongly correlate with histologic subtype, mutational status, T stage, and lymph node metastases

Need more features? Save interactive summary cards to your Scholarcy Library.