Gene therapy for thyroid cancer.

Thyroid carcinomas are suitable targets for gene therapy because they can be highly lethal on one hand, while being susceptible to specific tumour targeting on the other hand. Several gene therapy modalities have been evaluated so far in experimental models of thyroid cancer, including tumour suppressor gene replacement, oncogene inhibition, suicide gene therapy, immunotherapy, antiangiogenesis, and viral oncolysis. All of these strategies have shown promising results, but clinical studies are lacking. Based on the clinical experience achieved in a pilot study in patients with advanced thyroid cancer and on clinical results in other types of solid cancer, it is suggested that combined gene therapy approaches, as well as multimodality therapeutic regimens, including gene therapy and conventional treatments, should be pursued to achieve clinically significant results.