MEMBRANE RECEPTOR HETEROMERS IN THYROID CANCER

MEMBRANE RECEPTOR HETEROMERS IN THYROID CANCER

Thyroid is an endocrine gland involved in the regulation of cellular metabolism throughout life and in the development of the central nervous system during fetal age and childhood. It produces thyroid hormones (triiodothyronine and thyroxine) in response to the glycoprotein thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). The high incidence of thyroid cancer and thyroid nodules in female gender may be explained with the estrogen production during fertile life-time but the mechanism underlying the pathogenesis is still poorly understood. Estradiol is a potent growth factor for both healthy and pathological thyroid cells as it has been previously demonstrated that these cells can exhibit transmembrane G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER), which is implicated in a variety of hormone-responsiveness tumors and mediates rapid non-genomic estrogenic signaling, crucial for proliferation and propagation of thyroid cancer. 

Considering the data already demonstrated by our group of research, concerning dimerization of GPER and follicle-stimulating hormone receptor (FSHR), and considering the high structural similarity between FSHR and thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor (THSR), we are to investigate in vitro the existence of dimerization between GPER and TSHR on both healthy and pathological thyroid cells and its influence on the development of thyroid cancer.