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In the preface of the book he edited (1), and to which Nick Sarlis and I had the privilege of contributing a chapter that is pertinent to this editorial, the late Nadir Farid wrote, “Given the relative success we have in its [thyroid cancer] treatment, there is a need to capitalize on it by better understanding the factors that underpin this malignancy, and exploring better strategies for diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up. To do so, we must take full advantage of the revolution in modern biology.” He then alluded to the major advance in therapeutics constituted by the availability of “drugs that might influence the course of poorly differentiated thyroid and anaplastic thyroid cancer.” In 2006, the American Thyroid Association (ATA) issued the revision of the 1996 guidelines for management of thyroid nodules and differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC), which in November 2009 were updated again (2). The 2006 and 2009 ATA guidelines both have a section entitled “What are the directions for future research?” The first heading of this section is entitled “Novel therapies and clinical trials,” and it takes into account the “minority of patients [who] experience progressive, life-threatening growth and metastatic spread of the disease.” The novel therapies were grouped under five categories: inhibitors of oncogenic signaling pathways, modulators of growth or apoptosis, angiogenesis inhibitors, immunomodulators, and gene therapy. As Dr. Leonard Wartofsky, the present JCEM Editor-in-Chief, pointed out in one of the accompanying editorials (3), “Given the flurry of clinical trials with new therapeutic agents that might target thyroid cancer, a significantly expanded section on promising new agents may have been expected. It appears that this will have to wait for the next revision.”

Issue Section:
Editorials - Editorial
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