Genetics of follicular thyroid cancer.

Cancer is a multistep phenomenon, and multiple cellular genetic lesions are involved in the emergence of the malignant neoplasm. Several early events, including ras mutations in follicular thyroid carcinoma and RET gene rearrangement in papillary tumors, have been implicated in the neoplastic transformation of thyrocytes. The stepwise array of mutations or deletions described to date in candidate oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes that are necessary for the advance to malignancy and for tumor progression await further investigation. The identification of additional, thyroid-cancer-specific lesions in these pathways is being further studied also.