Ricerc@Sapienza

Epithelial thyroid cancer (TC) is the most common endocrine malignancy, accounting for about 1% of all human tumors and representing the fifth most expected cancer in women. The majority of TC (90-95%) are well differentiated carcinomas (WDTC), mainly occurring as papillary or follicular histotypes, the incidence of which has been increasing over recent years. The prognosis of WDTC is largely favourable, but in some cases they can evolve and give rise to highly aggressive forms that do not respond to the currently available therapies, often with a fatal outcome.
Malignant cells rely on multiple nutrients to meet cellular bioenergetics and macromolecular synthesis demands of rapidly dividing cells. Although the role of glucose and glutamine in cancer metabolism is well understood, less is known about the relative contribution of acetate. A number of clinical studies of PET imaging documented an avid [11C]-acetate uptake in several cancer types. Moreover, recent high-profile reports evidenced that the cell capability of using acetate as alternative metabolic substrate plays a major part in the earlier stages of tumor development as well as in metastatization. Some proteins involved in acetate metabolism have been proven to exert oncogenic actions in different cancer types, and now are regarded as new potential therapeutic targets. Based on these lines of evidence, the present research proposal is aimed at investigating the role of acetate as nutritional source in thyroid carcinomas.