- Title
- Innervation of papillary thyroid cancer and its association with extra-thyroidal invasion
- Creator
- Rowe, Christopher W.; Dill, Tony; Griffin, Nathan; Jobling, Phil; Faulkner, Sam; Paul, Jonathan W.; King, Simon; Smith, Roger; Hondermarck, Hubert
- Relation
- Scientific Reports Vol. 10, no. 1539
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58425-5
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- Nerves are emerging regulators of cancer progression and in several malignancies innervation of the tumour microenvironment is associated with tumour aggressiveness. However, the innervation of thyroid cancer is unclear. Here, we investigated the presence of nerves in thyroid cancers and the potential associations with clinicopathological parameters. Nerves were detected by immunohistochemistry using the pan-neuronal marker PGP9.5 in whole-slide sections of papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) (n = 75), compared to follicular thyroid cancer (FTC) (n = 13), and benign thyroid tissues (n = 26). Nerves were detected in most normal thyroid tissues and thyroid cancers, but nerve density was increased in PTC (12 nerves/cm2 [IQR 7–21]) compared to benign thyroid (6 nerves/cm2 [IQR: 3–10]) (p = 0.001). In contrast, no increase in nerve density was observed in FTC. In multivariate analysis, nerve density correlated positively with extrathyroidal invasion (p < 0.001), and inversely with tumour size (p < 0.001). The majority of nerves were adrenergic, although cholinergic and peptidergic innervation was detected. Perineural invasion was present in 35% of PTC, and was independently associated with extrathyroidal invasion (p = 0.008). This is the first report of infiltration of nerves into the tumour microenvironment of thyroid cancer and its association with tumour aggressiveness. The role of nerves in thyroid cancer pathogenesis should be further investigated.
- Subject
- cancer microenvironment; thyroid cancer; tumour microenvironment; tumour aggressiveness; SDG 3; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1415876
- Identifier
- uon:36968
- Identifier
- ISSN:2045-2322
- Rights
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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