Purpose: Thyroid cancer is the most frequently occurring endocrine malignan
cy; however, preoperative diagnosis of same lesions, in particular those wi
th follicular histology, is difficult, and a consistent number of not-other
wise specified "follicular nodules" are surgically resected more for diagno
sis than therapeutic purposes. In this study we investigated whether the le
ctin-related molecules CD44v6 and galectin-3, the expression of which is al
tered during deregulated cell growth and malignant transformation, could be
potential markers for improving the diagnostic accuracy of conventional cy
tology,
Materials and Methods: A comparative immunochemical and molecular analysis
was performed on 157 thyroid specimens representative of normal, benign, an
d malignant tissues, and on 36 cytologic samples obtained preoperatively by
fine-needle aspiration biopsy from nonselected patients with palpable thyr
oid nodules.
Results: Normal thyrocytes did not express galectin-3 nor CD44v6. Although
the expression of CD44v6 is negligible in thyroiditis, there molecules are
variably detected in benign and malignant proliferative lesions. interestin
gly, galectin-3 is never expressed in benign lesions, but is invariably det
ected in cancers, A comparative evaluation of CD44v6 and galectin-3 express
ion in thyroid malignancies demonstrated that these molecules ore coexpress
ed at the messenger RNA and protein lever in almost all lesions,
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that CD44v6 and galectin-3 could be potent
ial markers to preoperatively identify malignant transformed thyrocytes, Im
munodetection of these molecules on cytologic specimens obtained by fine-ne
edle aspiration biopsy is an accurate and improved method for selecting, on
a molecular basis, there nodular lesions of the thyroid gland that need to
be surgically resected, (C) 1999 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.