Yi-Chiung Hsu1, Jie-Jen Lee2, Ming-Nan Chien3, Ming-Jen Chen2,4, Ching-Hsiang Leung3, Shih-Ping Cheng2,4. 1. Department of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan City, Taiwan. 2. Department of Surgery, MacKay Memorial Hospital and Mackay Medical College, Taipei, Taiwan. 3. Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Internal Medicine, MacKay Memorial Hospital and Mackay Medical College, Taipei, Taiwan. 4. Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Papillary thyroid microcarcinoma exhibits an indolent clinical course and could be a candidate for active surveillance in the appropriate setting. It remains unknown whether papillary microcarcinoma is biologically different from larger papillary carcinoma >1 cm. METHODS: We analyzed clinicopathological information and transcriptome data of papillary thyroid cancer samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Propensity-score matching was used to construct a matched cohort consisting of 29 microcarcinomas and 58 carcinomas. Principal component analysis and unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis were carried out to investigate the similarity of gene expression profiles. RESULTS: After adjustment for differences in baseline clinicopathological and genetic factors, transcriptome could be grouped mainly on the basis of tumor class (BRAF-like vs RAS-like) and tumor size (microcarcinoma vs carcinoma). The gene set enrichment analysis showed that extracellular matrix-associated pathways were enriched in the MSigDB database. CONCLUSION: Papillary thyroid microcarcinomas display a distinct gene expression pattern different from the corresponding carcinomas. We hypothesize that tumor microenvironment may play a role in the microcarcinoma/carcinoma phenotypic divergence.
BACKGROUND:Papillary thyroid microcarcinoma exhibits an indolent clinical course and could be a candidate for active surveillance in the appropriate setting. It remains unknown whether papillary microcarcinoma is biologically different from larger papillary carcinoma >1 cm. METHODS: We analyzed clinicopathological information and transcriptome data of papillary thyroid cancer samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Propensity-score matching was used to construct a matched cohort consisting of 29 microcarcinomas and 58 carcinomas. Principal component analysis and unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis were carried out to investigate the similarity of gene expression profiles. RESULTS: After adjustment for differences in baseline clinicopathological and genetic factors, transcriptome could be grouped mainly on the basis of tumor class (BRAF-like vs RAS-like) and tumor size (microcarcinoma vs carcinoma). The gene set enrichment analysis showed that extracellular matrix-associated pathways were enriched in the MSigDB database. CONCLUSION:Papillary thyroid microcarcinomas display a distinct gene expression pattern different from the corresponding carcinomas. We hypothesize that tumor microenvironment may play a role in the microcarcinoma/carcinoma phenotypic divergence.
Authors: Joaquín de Carlos; Ander Ernaga; Ana Irigaray; Jose Javier Pineda; Ana Echegoyen; Pilar Salvador; Emma Anda Journal: Endocrine Date: 2022-05-31 Impact factor: 3.925