A Review of Driver Genetic Alterations in Thyroid Cancers

Thyroid cancer is a frequent endocrine-related malignancy with continuously increasing incidence, and recently the development in understanding its molecular pathogenesis is mainly through the explanation of the original role of several key signaling pathways and related molecular distributors. Central to these mechanisms are the genetic and epigenetic alterations in these pathways such as mutation and DNA rearrangements. However, it does not mean that all the somatic abnormalities in a cancer genome are involved in cancer development and just driver mutations are concerned in tumor initiation. By way of illustrations, MAPK pathway motivated by BRAF ^V600E and RAS and RET / PTC rearrangements are suggesting driver genetic alterations in follicular derived thyroid cancers considered in the current review.