SPC24 is critical for anaplastic thyroid cancer progression.

In the past 2 decades, the incidence of thyroid cancer has been rapidly increasing worldwide. Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is the most lethal of all thyroid cancers and one of the most aggressive human carcinomas. SPC24 is an important component of the mitotic checkpoint machinery in the tumorigenesis and high levels of SPC24 have been found in colorectal and hepatocellular carcinomas, but its role in anaplastic thyroid cancer is still unclear. Our results showed that SPC24 was high expressed in human thyroid cancer samples. In addition, knockingdown endogenous SPC24 could repress cell growth, inhibit cell invasive ability and promote apoptosis in different ATC cells. Next, in vivo xenograft studies indicated that the SPC24 knockdown cells has decreased tumor size compared to the controls. This conclusion is also endorsed by our studies using human thyroid cancer samples. Taken together, our data demonstrates that SPC24 can serve as a promising prognostic biomarker of ATC cells and it is a novel strategy which could be developed by targeting SPC24 in future.