Interplay of TGFβ signaling and microRNA in thyroid cell loss of differentiation and cancer progression

Thyroid cancer has been rapidly increasing in prevalence among humans in last 2 decades and is the most prevalent endocrine malignancy. Overall, thyroid-cancer patients have good rates of long-term survival, but a small percentage present poor outcome. Thyroid cancer aggressiveness is essentially related with thyroid follicular cell loss of differentiation and metastasis. The discovery of oncogenes that drive thyroid cancer (such as RET, RAS, and BRAF), and are aligned in the MAPK/ERK pathway has led to a new perspective of thyroid oncogenesis. The uncovering of additional oncogene-modulated signaling pathways revealed an intricate and active signaling cross-talk. Among these, microRNAs, which are a class of small, noncoding RNAs, expanded this cross-talk by modulating several components of the oncogenic network – thus establishing a new layer of regulation. In this context, TGFβ signaling plays an important role in cancer as a dual factor: it can exert an antimitogenic effect in normal thyroid follicular cells, and promote epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, cell migration, and invasion in cancer cells. In this review, we explore how microRNAs influence the loss of thyroid differentiation and the increase in aggressiveness of thyroid cancers by regulating the dual function of TGFβ. This review provides directions for future research to encourage the development of new strategies and molecular approaches that can improve the treatment of aggressive thyroid cancer.