Improved guidance is needed to optimise diagnostics and treatment of patients with thyroid cancer in Europe

Abstract

AbstractAlthough thyroid cancer (TC) is generally associated with a favourable prognosis, there are certain high-risk groups with a clear unmet therapeutic need. Unravelling the genomic landscape of TC has recently led to the development of novel effective targeted treatments. To date, these treatments have mostly been evaluated in non-randomised single-arm phase II clinical trials and are consequently non-reimbursed in several countries. Furthermore, most of these agents must be tailored to individual patient molecular characteristics, a context known as personalised cancer medicine, necessitating a requirement for predictive molecular biomarker testing. Existing guidelines, both in Europe and internationally, entail mostly therapeutic rather than molecular testing recommendations. This may reflect ambiguity among experts due to lack of evidence and also practical barriers in availability of the preferred molecular somatic screening and/or targeted treatments. This article reviews existing European recommendations regarding advanced/metastatic TC management with a special focus on molecular testing, and compares findings with real-world practice based on a recent survey involving TC experts from 18 European countries. Significant disparities are highlighted between theory and practice related to variable access to infrastructure, therapies and expertise, together with the insufficient availability of multidisciplinary tumour boards. In particular, practitioners’ choice of what, how and when to test is shown to be influenced by the expertise of the available laboratory, the financing source and the existence of potential facilitators, such as clinical trial access. Overall, the need of a collaborative initiative among European stakeholders to develop standardised, accessible molecular genotyping approaches in TC is underscored.