Sodium iodide symporter: its role in nuclear medicine

Thyroid iodide uptake is basic to the clinical applications of radioiodine. Iodide uptake occurs across the membrane of the thyroid follicular cells through an active transporter process mediated by the sodium iodide symporter (NIS). The recent cloning of the NIS gene enabled the better characterization of the molecular mechanisms underlying iodide transport, thus opening the way to the clarification and expansion of its role in nuclear medicine. In papillary and follicular carcinoma, NIS immunostaining was positive in only a few tumor cells, and no NIS protein expression was detected in anaplastic carcinomas. Decreased NIS expression levels account for the reduced iodide uptake in thyroid carcinomas. Thus, by targeting NIS expression in cancer cells, we could enable these cells to concentrate iodide from plasma and in so doing offer the possibility of radioiodine therapy. Several investigators have shown that gene transfer of NIS into a variety of cell types confers increased radioiodine uptake by up to several hundredfold that of controls in nonthyroid cancers as well as in thyroid cancer. In addition, my group proposes that NIS may serve as an alternative imaging reporter gene in addition to the HSVtk and dopaminergic receptor genes. The NIS has the potential to expand the role of nuclear medicine in the future, just as it has served as the base for the development of nuclear medicine in the past.