CD133 Expression in Medullary Thyroid Cancer Cells Identifies Patients with Poor Prognosis

The identification of markers able to determine medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) patients at high-risk of disease progression is critical to improve their clinical management and outcome. Previous studies have suggested that expression of the stem cell marker CD133 is associated with MTC aggressiveness.

To evaluate CD133 impact on disease progression in MTC and explore the regulatory mechanisms leading to the upregulation of this protein in aggressive tumors.

We compiled a series of 74 MTCs with associated clinical data and characterized them for mutations in RET and RAS proto-oncogenes, presumed to be related with disease clinical behavior.

We found that CD133 immunohistochemical expression was associated with adverse clinicopathological features and predicted a reduction in time to disease progression even when only RET-mutated cases were considered in the analysis (log-rank test P < 0.003). Univariate analysis for progression-free survival revealed CD133 expression and presence of tumor emboli in peritumoral blood vessels as the most significant prognostic covariates among others such as age, gender, and prognostic stage. Multivariate analysis identified both variables as independent factors of poor prognosis (hazard ratio = 16.6 and 2; P = 0.001 and 0.010, respectively). Finally, we defined hsa-miR-30a-5p, a miRNA downregulated in aggressive MTCs, as a CD133 expression regulator. Ectopic expression of hsa-miR-30a-5p in MZ-CRC-1 (RETM918T) cells significantly reduced CD133 mRNA expression.

Our results suggest that CD133 expression may be a useful tool to identify MTC patients with poor prognosis, who may benefit from a more extensive primary surgical management and follow-up.