ANTICANCER RESEARCH 30: 1273-1278 (2010)

A Case of Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer with Long-term Survival

Departments of 1Medical Oncology, 3Oncological Surgery and

Departments of 4Pathology and 5Otolaryngology, Padua University School of Medicine, Padua, Italy;
7Department of Radiation Oncology Dept, Iaso Maternity Hospital, Athens, Greece

Abstract. Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) (less than confirms the de-differentiation hypothesis on ATC genesis from
10% of all thyroid cancer) is a high-grade neoplasm, pre-existing well-differentiated carcinoma. Risk factors for
characterized by an aggressive clinical course and well-differentiated and anaplastic tumours, from this point of
refractoriness to currently available local and systemic view, may be similar: ATC, in fact, is more common in people
modalities of treatment. It is considered the most aggressive who have previous benign thyroid disease (1) and it more
solid tumour, there is no adequate therapy for this disease frequently arises in females and in patients older than 50 years
and few patients with ATC live more than 1 year following (often between 60-70 years of age) (1, 4).
diagnosis. We report herein an unusual case of ATC in a 59- At present, it is considered the most aggressive type of
year-old woman. She presented to our Institute in December solid tumour, with a median overall survival shorter than six
2004. She received many kinds of chemotherapeutical and months, while the percentage of patients surviving longer
multimodal treatment; we obtained a long period of localized than one year is less than 20% (7).
disease (about two years) and an excellent response to Usually, ATC manifests itself as a neck lesion
therapy. She is still alive 58 months from diagnosis. characterized by a rapid growth and the involvement of both
thyroid lobes (8). The most frequent symptoms are due to
Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is a high-grade local compression and include dyspnoea, dysphagia, vocal
neoplasm, characterized by an aggressive clinical course with cord paralysis, superior cava vein syndrome, and headache.
brief survival, and is refractory to currently available local At the diagnosis, up to half of all patients have locally
and systemic modalities of treatment. It represents fewer than advanced disease with involved locoregional lymph nodes,
10% of all thyroid cancer cases, but accounts for up to 39% and up to 40% have distant metastatic spread, involving
of thyroid carcinoma deaths; early invasion of local mainly lung, bone and brain.
structures is as common as that of locoregional lymph nodes There is no adequate therapy for this disease. The
and distant metastasis (1-4). treatment of ATC, whenever possible, is surgery, with radical
There are approximately 420-900 new cases in Europe, intent. However, this approach is not always possible because
700-1200 new cases per year in the US. Due to the rapid the tumour is often locally advanced at diagnosis hence
death rate, the incidence (annual number of new cases) and therapeutic options also include local radiotherapy and
prevalence (total number of cases present at any time) are chemotherapy (9).
essentially the same (3, 5, 6). Some years ago, the most commonly used chemotherapeutic
It is possible to find areas of ATC next to well-differentiated agent was adriamycin (or the analogous epirubicin); since then,
areas of carcinomas (papillary and/or follicular). This fact other agents have been used such as cisplatin (or the analogous
carboplatin) and more recently the taxanes (paclitaxel and
docetaxel).
In the recent years, some new therapeutic drugs have
Correspondence to: Haralabos Koussis, Medical Oncology
been evaluated. Notably, inhibitors of RAF kinase (a non-
Department, Istituto Oncologico Veneto - IRCCS, Via Gattamelata,
64, I-35128 Padova, Italy. e-mail: [email protected]
specific serine/threonine protein kinase), such as sorafenib
and some others, inhibit the growth of human tumor
Key Words: Case report, anaplastic thyroid carcinoma, multimodal xenografts derived from ATC tumors in nude mice (10, 11).
treatment, chemotherapy, long-term survival. Another novel anti-cancer agent is combretastatin A4-

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Figure 1. PET-CT scan December 2005 (the lesion had almost disappeared).

phosphate, which displays potent and selective toxicity dysphagia of some months duration. She had a past medical
towards tumour vasculature (12-14) and promises new valid history of surgery for an ovarian cystis in 1974, at the age of
approach to the disease (15-16). 25, and of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus since
The response rate to conventional chemo- and 1998. She has never been exposed to radiation.
radiotherapy is often low and multimodality treatment On admission, in December 2004, due to the evidence of
remains the treatment of choice, even if the optimal sequence a neck lesion, a computed tomography (CT) scan which
of multimodal treatment is not known. revealed a 5 cm lesion at the base of the left neck
originating from the left thyroid lobus, extending up to the
Case Report mediastinal area. A thyroid biopsy was performed and
confirmed the diagnosis of ATC. Excisional surgery was
A 59-year-old woman presented to our Institute in December excluded because of the local invasion and the arterial
2004 with history of cough and a progressive dyspnoea and compression.

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Figure 2. PET- CT scan February 2007.

The patient was treated with a multimodal treatment of therapy (transdermal fentalyl) because of significant local
cisplatin (50 mg total weekly) and local radiotherapy (2 pain of the neck.
Gy/day, total dose 28 Gy), for three weeks, without clinically In August 2005, the patient received a new chemo-
significant toxicity. therapeutical treatment with docetaxel at 35 mg/m2 on day
In March 2005, a tracheotomy was performed, due to 1, 8, 15, every 28 days (until November 2005).
persistent dyspnoea; the patient started a new chemo- At the end of 2005, a positron-emission tomography
therapeutic regimen of epirubicin at 50 mg/m2 plus cisplatin (PET)-CT scan was performed (Figure 1). It revealed only a
at 60 mg/m2, on day 1 and 2, every 21 days. After three small questionable area in the pharynx and the lesion had
cycles, a CT scan showed stable disease (SD) in April 2005. almost disappeared; however the patient reported significant
The chemotherapy was continued until June 2005 (four pain localized in the right half of the neck, and dyspnoea.
cycles total, with an adverse event of febrile neutropenia, Due to these symptoms, the patient started a new regimen
treated with antibiotic therapy), associated with analgesic of therapy receiving vinorelbine at 25 mg/m2 on day 1, 8,

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Figure 3. CT scan October 2007, multiple lung metastases are apparent.

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every 28 days for two cycles until February 2006 (interrupted scientific literature and in our experience, the multimodal
because of a hospitalization due to local pain). In March approach may be an important factor in avoiding metastatic
2006, a new disease staging was performed: bone progression (17-19) even if this case does not meet the
scintigraphy revealed high uptake in the right clavicle and in prognostic factors proposed by Kihara et al. (20).
the eighth left rib; a CT scan demonstrated an area of Regarding the chemotherapy, our attitude was to be
inflammation and fistula from the tracheostomy to the half aggressive against this kind of cancer, giving the patient
of clavicle, with focal osteo-necrosis (confirmed with different courses of chemotherapeutic agents such as
magnetic resonance (MR) scan). Antibiotic treatment was anthracyclines, platinum compounds and taxanes. The
given. The patient received another two cycles of chemotherapy plus radiotherapy followed by an almost
chemotherapy with vinorelbine. From May to December complete response, and weekly administration of docetaxel,
2006, because of the asthenia probably caused by in this patient allowed the control of the disease progression
vinorelbine, the patient again received therapy with docetaxel and resulted in an unusually long survival, against all
at 35 mg/m2 weekly and appropriate analgesic therapy with expectations (21).
opioid drugs because of local pain at the neck. We also administered sunitinib to this patient. Sunitinib is
In February 2007, another PET-CT scan was performed, an oral, small-molecule, multi-targeted receptor tyrosine kinase
revealing only moderate uptake in thyroid cartilage inhibitor. It acts against all receptors for platelet-derived growth
[standardized glucose uptake value (SUV) 3.0] and in the factor and vascular endothelial growth factor, which play a role
right sternal-clavicular articulation (Figure 2). In April 2007, in both tumor angiogenesis and tumor cell proliferation (22).
patient requested a six-month pause from therapy (weekly Some clinical trials are ongoing to demonstrate the activity of
docetaxel). In October 2007, after the required pause from this new drug in ATC (23). Unfortunately, the decision of the
therapy, a further CT scan revealed multiple lung metastases patient regarding a six-month pause from therapy with
(Figure 3). It was decided the patient would be treated again docetaxel probably influenced the control of the disease,
with docetaxel (35 mg/m2 on day 1, 8, 15), which was the leading to distant metastatic spread.
chemotherapeutic agent that demonstrated a good control of The use of taxanes (paclitaxel, docetaxel) in our centre is
the disease of 4 and 8 months of SD for the two periods of based on the experience of some authors (24). Ain et al.
therapy with docetaxel, without clinically significant toxicity. demonstrated the activity of taxanes in ATC in vivo and in vitro
In November 2007, due to further local progressive disease (25); later they also demonstrated the use of paclitaxel (96-hour
localized near the tracheotomy (with vocal cord paralysis), continous infusion) in ATC (1 complete response (CR) and 9
patient received liposomal doxorubicin at 40 mg/m2 every four partial response (PR) in 19 patients) in a phase II clinical trial,
weeks. During further staging disease, SD was revealed on with an important percentage of responses (PR+CR)(26).
two consecutive visits with multiple lung metastases, sternal Some other authors demonstrated the activity of paclitaxel
lysis and hepatic lesion (January 2008 and March 2008, CT in vitro (27) and in ATC with metastasis (28), and the
scan). Liposomal doxorubicin was administered until August activity of docetaxel (29). The use of taxanes in ATC is also
2008, followed by therapy with sunitinib (37.5 mg for 28 days, under evaluation in a clinical trail ongoing in some centres,
every 42 days) from September 2008, due to progression of in association with the novel anticancer agent combretastatin
the disease. A4-phosphate (15-17).
Currently (September 2009), the patient is continuing In our patient, chemo- and concomitant radiotherapy,
sunitinib and has referred loss of weight and asthenia due to followed by standard chemotherapy (adriamicyn, cisplatin)
the disease and three episodes of local bleeding, probably and the further chemotherapy with low-dose docetaxel
due to the treatment. allowed quite good control of the disease for some years,
The patient is still alive, with further local disease as with almost complete response. For the patient, the use of
shown by chest X-ray, 58 months from diagnosis. taxanes doubtless provides advantage.
The use of taxanes appears to be of importance in some
Discussion ATC cases, even if we do not have any predictive factor of
response to this therapy. More clinical trials are needed to
The reported case shows similarities and differences in evaluate the action of taxanes in association with traditional
comparison to the common course of ATC. The age at chemotherapeutic agents or with new molecular target
diagnosis, the rapid growth and the impossibility of a surgical agents, such as combretastatin A4-phosphate, which is one
treatment are common in this tumour type. On the other hand, of the best promising novel antivascular agents (12-16).
the long period (about two years) of disease localized only in More studies are also needed to evaluate the activity of
the neck and the excellent response to radiochemotherapy are sunitinib, used as a single agent in metastatic or advanced
the most important differences from standard ATC. The ATC: first data highlight a quite good tolerance and an
reason for disease control in this case is not clear, but in the association with a high level of SD (24).

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Presently, there is no standard approach to therapy in ATC; 16 Yeung SC, She M, Yang H, Pan J, Sun L and Chaplin D:
multimodal treatment seems to be the key to improvement in Combination chemotherapy including combretastatin A4
outcome against this lethal disease, even if the correct phosphate and paclitaxel is effective against anaplastic thyroid
cancer in a nude mouse xenograft model. J Clin Endocr Met 92:
sequencing of therapy is not known.
2902-2909, 2007.
17 Batori M, Chatelou E, Straniero A and Ruggeri M: Anaplastic
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