Thyroid Center

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The Thyroid Center Frontier Program at Children’s Hospital of Philadephia has a well-established national and international reputation of excellence; a large tissue biorepository; collaborative clinical relationships at CHOP, the University of Pennsylvania, and throughout the pediatric thyroid community; and a dedicated pediatric thyroid cancer translational research program.

We are at a point in time when there is an opportunity to establish a paradigm shift in the evaluation and treatment of patients who present with widely invasive regional and distant metastasis associated with a high risk of surgical complications or that develop disease that is progressive, not responsive to the traditional approach to care. The Frontier Program will expand the knowledge of the molecular landscape of metastatic disease in pediatric thyroid cancer with the intent of improving the accuracy of diagnosis and the appropriate therapy for treatment.

In addition, the insight gained into the molecular signature involved in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and acquisition of metastatic behavior will lead to identification of novel therapeutic targets and establish new collaborations and protocols for the treatment and management of patients with advanced disease. The Thyroid Center Frontier Program will continue to be the global leader in pediatric thyroid cancer research and clinical care.

Research Highlights

  • Established the first pediatric specific, translational thyroid cancer program in the North America dedicated to identifying pediatric specific molecular markers to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and predict the response to therapy, including pre-clinical investigation of therapeutic targets for patients
  • Identified molecular subtypes for differentiated thyroid cancer based on oncogenic driver mutations that more accurately predict invasive behavior compared to pathology alone
  • Sponsoring institute for the North American Child and Adolescent Thyroid Consortium with a multicenter clinical registry and biorepository
  • Creating the first pediatric specific thyroid cytology atlas with second-opinion referral service to improve the accuracy of diagnosis of for children and adolescents undergoing fine needle aspiration of thyroid nodules
  • Our ongoing research seeks to determine the effect of hyperthyroidism on neurocognitive dysfunction, to study the impact of hypo- and hyperthyroidism on driving safety in adolescents and young adults, and to assess the quality of life of our thyroid cancer patients