Research underway on essential genes in medullary thyroid cancer
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CHICAGO — Investigators from The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center have initiated research on the proteomic gene alterations in medullary thyroid cancer to develop better targeted therapies for this patient population, according to data presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Thyroid Association.
“If we were to understand the proteome changes during medullary thyroid cancer tumor development, we thought that perhaps we could target it,” Wayne O. Miles, PhD, assistant professor in the department of molecular genetics at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, said during a presentation.
Miles and colleagues are working to identify therapeutic opportunities by building networks of RNA and proteomics changes in medullary thyroid cancer cells and patient samples.
Results thus far have shown widespread transcriptional and proteomic reprogramming in medullary thyroid cancer cells that appear distinct from otherwise healthy cells.
Further, researchers have found that significant upregulated proteins in cell lines appear associated with RET activation, and oxidative phosphorylation proteins and mitochondrial factors appear consistently and significantly decreased in medullary thyroid cancer cells.
“More work is needed to determine how each of the changes contribute to cellular phenotypes,” Miles said. “Future work will include independent testing of proteomic changes to confirm reproducibility and evaluation of the requirement for each of the proteomic events in medullary thyroid cancer cell growth and survival.”
Miles and colleagues have also identified widespread programming in the proteome in multiple endocrine neoplasia 2A (MEN2A) patient samples.
“We have observed significant changes in stress response pathways, ubiquitin/proteasome growth and attachment and multiple ‘druggable’ signaling events have changed,” Miles said. “Coming in the future is expansion of our number of MEN2A samples, we will also add medullary thyroid cancer tumors to the collection and merge these proteome data with RNA-sequencing data.” – by Jennifer Southall
Reference:
Miles WO, et al. Proteomic-led discovery of essential genes in medullary thyroid cancer. Presented at: Annual Meeting of the American Thyroid Association; Oct. 30-Nov. 3, 2019; Chicago.
Disclosures: Miles reports no relevant financial disclosures.