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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: EJE-08-0190v1 159/3/283    most recent Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Google Scholar Articles by Antonelli, A. Articles by Ferrannini, E. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Antonelli, A. Articles by Ferrannini, E.

Evaluation of the sensitivity to chemotherapeutics or thiazolidinediones of primary anaplastic thyroid cancer cells obtained by fine-needle aspiration

Department of Internal MedicineSchool of Medicine, University of Pisa, Via Roma, 67, I-56100 Pisa, Italy¹ Department of SurgeryUniversity of Pisa, Pisa, Italy² Division of SurgicalMolecular and Ultrastructural Pathology, Section of Cytopathology, University Hospital of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

(Correspondence should be addressed to A Antonelli; Email: a.antonelli{at}med.unipi.it)

Objective: Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is often unoperable and chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the main treatments. Until now ‘primary ATC cell cultures’ (ANA) have been developed from surgical biopsies. The possibility to obtain ANA from fine-needle aspiration (FNA-ANA) and to test their sensitivity to different drugs could increase the effectiveness of treatments and avoid unnecessary surgical procedures.

Design: To obtain FNA-ANA from six ATC patients before undergoing surgery and to evaluate the chemosensitivity of FNA-ANA to chemotherapeutic agents and thiazolidinediones (TZD).

Methods and results: FNA-ANA from the six ATC patients were cultured in RPMI 1640 and propagated in DMEM. Chemosensitivity was evaluated by inhibiting the proliferation with increasing concentrations of five different chemotherapeutic agents (bleomycin, cisplatin, gemcitabine, etoposide, and carboplatin) or TZD (rosiglitazone). Chemotherapeutic agents significantly inhibited (P<0.0001) FNA-ANA proliferation, such as TZD (P<0.001); etoposide was the most effective in reducing cell growth. Another ANA culture for each patient was obtained from a biopsy specimen; the results for the chemosensitivity tests were similar to those obtained with FNA-ANA. The ^V600EBRAF mutation was observed in two ATC patients; the inhibition of proliferation by drugs was similar in tumors with or without ^V600EBRAF mutation.

Conclusions: Our study demonstrates 1) the possibility to obtain FNA-ANA, and opens the way to the use of FNA-ANA to test the chemosensitivity to different drugs (chemotherapeutic agents or TZD; and possibly the radiosensitivity) in each patient, avoiding unnecessary surgical procedures and the administration of inactive chemotherapeutics; and 2) that etoposide is highly effective in reducing ATC cell growth in vitro.