Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are conducting clincial trials to determine if a genetic test can spare patients with nonaggressive thyroid cancer from full thyroid removal.
Here are four things to know about the clinical trial.
1. The two-year trial, one of the first of its kind, will investigate whether a UPMC-developed molecular genetic test, ThyroSeq, can differentiate between thyroid cancers requiring full resection of the thyroid gland and cancers requiring less invasive procedures.
2. Thyroid-preserving surgery aims to lower surgical complications and keep patients from taking daily medication to sustain normal hormone levels.
3. A scientific team lead by Yuri Nikiforov, MD, PhD, director of UPMC's division of molecular and genomic pathology and co-director of the medical center's multidisciplinary thyroid center, developed the test. UPMC's latest version allows pathologists to simultaneously test 14 genes for 42 markers of thyroid cancer using cells collected during initial biopsy.
4. Scientists plan to enroll about 100 patients newly diagnoses with thyroid cancer in the trial.