October - December 2015, Volume 11, Issue 4

Dobrescu R, Badiu C

An Expanding Class in the Treatment of Thyroid Cancer: Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors

Acta Endo (Buc) 2015, 11 (4): 536-539
doi: 10.4183/aeb.2015.536

Thyroid cancer, the most frequent endocrine malignancy, is in most patients a treatable disease, with excellent outcome and cure rate. However, a few patients present with rapidly progressive metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer which loses the radioiodine uptake capacity. These rare cases are prone to a rapid evolution and poor prognosis. Medullary thyroid cancer is a neuroendocrine tumor occurring sporadically or as part of endocrine tumor syndromes, genetic tests being part of standard clinical evaluation. Current knowledge of tumor biology in thyroid cancer allowed development of a new class of drugs, thyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI). Their use in clinical trials allowed the development of more specific drugs, increasingly effective and with less adverse reactions, interfering with multiple thyrosine kinase enzymes. Improvement of the progression free survival, decrease of tumor volume and tumor markers, as well as patients with stable disease on TKI are strong arguments for including patients in clinical trials. Currently, only four TKI are approved by FDA: sorafenib and lenvatinib for DTC; vandetanib and cabozantinib for MTC. In this paper we present this new class of drugs used in the treatment of aggressive thyroid cancer.

Keywords: TKI, Lenvatinib, Thyroid cancer, Vandetanib, chemotherapy.

Correspondence: Corin Badiu MD, PhD, National Institute of Endocrinology, Thyroid Related Disorders, Aviatorilor 34-36, Bucharest, 011863, Romania, E-mail: badicrin@yahoo.co.uk