Advances in immunocytochemistry of thyroid tumours 1987-1994.

Abstract

The history of application of immunocytochemistry to the study of thyroid tumours goes back to the discovery of autoantibodies to thyroglobulin in mid- 1950s and the realisation that such autoantibodies as well as heterologous animal antibodies may be used for immunofluorescence tracing of thyroglobulin in normal and neoplastic thyroids. By the early 1970s, the basic idea of using an antibody to trace cell specific antigen was applied to identify parafollicular or C-cell tumours of the thyroid using antibodies to calcitonin (Wolfe et al. 1974). This approach also proved crucial in establishing the existence of familial versus sporadic forms of medullary carcinomas (De Lellis et al. 1979). Since then the use of the more powerful immunoenzyme technology and an increasing variety of cell lineage specific antibodies have proved eminently important in the recognition of mixed follicular/medullary tumours, anaplastic carcinomas, primary lymphoma, and haemangioendothelioma of thyroid origin. These advances have been reviewed previously by Williams (1986) and Jasani and Newman (1988). The object of this chapter is to give a brief account of the more recently introduced immunocytochemical markers, focusing on their diagnostic and prognostic usefulness in relation to previously established markers of value in differential diagnostic and prognostic analysis of human thyroid tumours. The new and old markers and their respective differential diagnostic and prognostic uses are summarised in Tables 1 and 2. Contributions to improved reliability of thyroid tumour typing, either through the use of better preserved tissue material for analysis, more rigorous sample and case selection criteria, or increased understanding of the underlying molecular and cell biological principles of thyroid tumour growth and behaviour, are also discussed wherever appropriate.KeywordsThyroid CarcinomaPapillary Thyroid CarcinomaPapillary CarcinomaMedullary Thyroid CarcinomaFollicular CarcinomaThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.