Comparative analysis of protein expression in differentiated thyroid tumours: a multicentre study

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Molecular Pathology
• Biochemistry

Background:

• Differentiated thyroid tumours require accurate malignancy assessment.
• Identifying reliable protein markers is crucial for diagnosis and prognosis.
• Existing diagnostic methods can be enhanced by molecular profiling.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare clinical features and protein expression in differentiated thyroid tumours.
• To identify protein markers indicative of malignancy status.
• To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of potential protein markers.

Main Methods:

• Construction of tissue microarrays from 119 thyroid tumour samples (papillary carcinomas, follicular carcinomas, adenomas).
• Analysis of protein expression profiles including PCNA, p53, MMP-7, HBME-1, MMP-2, PTTG, hTERT, FHIT, p16, and E-cadherin.
• Application of multiple factor binary logistic regression and receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis.

Main Results:

• Malignant thyroid carcinomas showed overexpression of PCNA, p53, MMP-7, HBME-1, MMP-2, PTTG, and hTERT.
• Thyroid adenomas overexpressed FHIT, p16, and E-cadherin.
• MMP-2, HBME-1, p16, and FHIT were independently related to differentiated thyroid tumours.
• HBME-1 demonstrated the highest diagnostic accuracy, with enhanced sensitivity and specificity when combined with p16.

Conclusions:

• HBME-1 and p16 are promising protein markers for differentiating thyroid tumours.
• A combination of HBME-1 and p16 offers superior diagnostic accuracy.
• p16 expression is significantly specific for differentiating tumour types within differentiated thyroid carcinomas.