Aims Thyroid cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among endocrine tumors. Surgery is the standard therapeutic strategy for patients with differentiated thyroid carcinomas (DTC). After thyroidectomy radioactive iodine (RAI) treatment is used to ablate residual thyroidal tissues. When DTC progresses, cells can develop refractoriness to RAI, impacting negatively the prognosis. The available therapeutical strategies (i.e., surgery, chemotherapy and external beam radiation therapy) can cause significant side effects with no prolongation of survival. Thus, it may be worthy to delineate an effective systemic therapy in patients with dedifferentiated DTC (De-DTC) to ameliorate their quality of life. In the next future, the success of treatments may be increased by novel and more effective antineoplastic compounds. Testing the sensitivity of human primary DeDTC cells obtained from each subject, to different drugs, could determinate an increase in the effectiveness of the treatment avoiding the administration of inactive therapeutics.
Methods In this study we planned to evaluate in vitro the antineoplastic effects of CLM24, a compound with pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine nucleus, in human primary De-DTC cell cultures and in the AF cell line, derived from primary anaplastic TC cells.
Results CLM24 demonstrated a significant antiproliferative action on the AF cell line (with BRAF V600E mutation), and a significant pro-apoptotic effect. In primary De-DTC cells with/without V600EBRAF mutation, CLM24 reduced significantly the proliferation (vs. control), while did not in primary normal thyroid follicular cells. In De-DTC cells with/without V600EBRAF mutation, the ratio of apoptotic cells increased in a dose dependent manner after treatment with CLM24, which also significantly inhibited cell migration and invasion.
Conclusion The pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine derivative CLM24 demonstrated a potent antineoplastic effect in vitro in primary De-DTC cells, and this effect did not depend on the presence/absence of the V600EBRAF mutation. These promising results make CLM24 worthy of further investigation for a possible clinical trial.