Molecular pathology of thyroid cancer

Thyroid cancer is increasing in incidence. Although often indolent and highly curable neoplasms, they may recur, metastasize, or become resistant to radio-iodine therapy. Advances in understanding the molecular mechanisms that lead to the development and progression of these neoplasms provide opportunity for prevention, effective early identification and targeted therapies for management of aggressive cancers. We review the molecular alterations implicated in thyroid cancer initiation and progression, gene expression profiling and microRNA studies, as well as the results of emerging new data from genome-wide association and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analyses.