Global profiling of the signaling network of papillary thyroid carcinoma

AimsThyroid carcinoma is one of the most fast rising cancer diagnoses in the US. Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) comprises 80% of thyroid carcinoma. The goal of our study is to identify regulatory proteins and signaling pathways altered in PTC.Main methodsProtein Pathway Array (PPA) was applied to screen 65 signaling proteins and phosphoproteins in 27 pairs of PTC and surrounding benign tissues. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) was applied to analyze the signaling pathway.Key Findings11 were differentially expressed between tumors and surrounding tissues, 8 of which were up-regulated (cytokeratin 18, Stat 1, HMG-1, p-p70 S6 kinase, Raf-B, glutamine synthetase, p-PKC δ, and HDAC1), while 3 of which were down-regulated (cytokeratin 5, BECN1, and p-ERK). Further study showed that two proteins (p-p70 S6 kinase and cytokeratin 18) were associated with lymph node metastasis. The top 10 canonical pathways in PTC were identified to be involved in PTC.SignificanceTaken together, there is a broad array of dysregulation of signaling proteins in PTC, suggesting a heterogeneous group of diseases.