In this review we present practical aspects of thyroid molecular tumorigenesis. The most important issue is the molecular diagnosis of affected patients with RET mutations in families with medullary thyroid carcinoma and multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2. In addition, we discuss the molecular pathologenesis of differentiated thyroid carcinoma, like the data on RET/PTC rearrangements in papillary carcinoma and PAX8-PPARg1 rearrangement in follicular carcinoma. Subsequently, we present gain of function mutations in thyroid nodules and finally we conclude discussing the use of messenger RNA of thyroglobulin in the follow-up of patients with differentiated thyroid cancer.
Thyroid tumorigenesis; RET gene; Thyroid carcinoma; Multiple endocrine neoplasia; TSH; Thyroglobulin
