RIYADH: A research team headed by professor Khawla Al-Kuraya at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSH) has published a landmark paper that provides many novel insights into the inner working of
thyroid cancer.
The study has been accepted by the prestigious American Journal of Human Genetics, the official journal of the American Society of Human Genetics.
Thyroid cancer cases are rare in the West but are alarmingly common in the Kingdom.
Speaking to Arab News, Al-Kuraya, who directs the Research Center at King Fahad National Children’s Cancer Center of King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, said Sunday that according to the latest Saudi Cancer Registry (SCR-2014), the incidence of thyroid cancer is 7.0 percent of all cancers among Saudis.
“It is the second most common cancer in women comprising 10.2 percent of all cancer cases among women, the most common being breast cancer,” she said. In the Al-Jouf region, thyroid cancer is the most common cancer, irrespective of gender
“I was truly flattered by the very encouraging comments we received from the other scientists who reviewed our manuscript, a testimony to the impact of this discovery,” Al-Kuraya said, adding that she is indebted to the very generous support she received from the Saudi government which fully supported her work and understood that high quality research requires generous funding.
Al-Kuraya said this is the largest study of its kind in thyroid cancer to date.
By fully sequencing the coding genome of more than 100 thyroid cancer patients, Al-Kuraya’s team was able to identify a number of novel genes that have not been linked before to cancer.
“The most exciting in this discovery cohort was our finding that thyroglobulin, a gene key to thyroid function, appeared to sustain repeated damaging events mostly in patients with very aggressive disease,” Al-Kuraya, noted. “We were especially intrigued by the possibility that damaged thyroglobulin somehow enhances metastasis."
Metastasis is a final common eventuality of nearly all cancers and is usually what kills patients in cancer rather than primary disease. In metastasis, the primary cancer manages to shoot some of its cells through blood to distant organs where they seed and replicate the cancer there, albeit in a much more aggressive fashion. Surprisingly, very little is known about what drives metastasis in cancer.
“Consistent with the hypothesis, we found that metastasis was much more likely to harbor damaged thyroglobulin.
More importantly, we found evidence that a very rare damaging event to thyroglobulin in the primary thyroid cancer becomes very common in the metastasis. This strongly suggests this damage was a key process in driving the cancer tissue to metastasize,” Al-Kuraya said.
The potential clinical implication of this key discovery is huge since it can help classify patients who are more likely to develop metastasis so they can undergo more aggressive treatment and surveillance. Furthermore, Al-Kuraya said, identifying key drivers of metastasis are in hot pursuit by big pharmaceutical companies as promising drug targets.
thyroid cancer.
The study has been accepted by the prestigious American Journal of Human Genetics, the official journal of the American Society of Human Genetics.
Thyroid cancer cases are rare in the West but are alarmingly common in the Kingdom.
Speaking to Arab News, Al-Kuraya, who directs the Research Center at King Fahad National Children’s Cancer Center of King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, said Sunday that according to the latest Saudi Cancer Registry (SCR-2014), the incidence of thyroid cancer is 7.0 percent of all cancers among Saudis.
“It is the second most common cancer in women comprising 10.2 percent of all cancer cases among women, the most common being breast cancer,” she said. In the Al-Jouf region, thyroid cancer is the most common cancer, irrespective of gender
“I was truly flattered by the very encouraging comments we received from the other scientists who reviewed our manuscript, a testimony to the impact of this discovery,” Al-Kuraya said, adding that she is indebted to the very generous support she received from the Saudi government which fully supported her work and understood that high quality research requires generous funding.
Al-Kuraya said this is the largest study of its kind in thyroid cancer to date.
By fully sequencing the coding genome of more than 100 thyroid cancer patients, Al-Kuraya’s team was able to identify a number of novel genes that have not been linked before to cancer.
“The most exciting in this discovery cohort was our finding that thyroglobulin, a gene key to thyroid function, appeared to sustain repeated damaging events mostly in patients with very aggressive disease,” Al-Kuraya, noted. “We were especially intrigued by the possibility that damaged thyroglobulin somehow enhances metastasis."
Metastasis is a final common eventuality of nearly all cancers and is usually what kills patients in cancer rather than primary disease. In metastasis, the primary cancer manages to shoot some of its cells through blood to distant organs where they seed and replicate the cancer there, albeit in a much more aggressive fashion. Surprisingly, very little is known about what drives metastasis in cancer.
“Consistent with the hypothesis, we found that metastasis was much more likely to harbor damaged thyroglobulin.
More importantly, we found evidence that a very rare damaging event to thyroglobulin in the primary thyroid cancer becomes very common in the metastasis. This strongly suggests this damage was a key process in driving the cancer tissue to metastasize,” Al-Kuraya said.
The potential clinical implication of this key discovery is huge since it can help classify patients who are more likely to develop metastasis so they can undergo more aggressive treatment and surveillance. Furthermore, Al-Kuraya said, identifying key drivers of metastasis are in hot pursuit by big pharmaceutical companies as promising drug targets.
