Strategies to investigate migration and metastases in thyroid cancer

Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy and is also one of the most rapidly increasing cancers worldwide. Although most patients have an excellent prognosis, a significant portion of patients experience disease relapse and metastatic progression. Treatment options for these patients remain inadequate as traditional chemotherapy has limited efficacy, and aggressive disease frequently acquires resistance to radioactive iodine. Because the majority of thyroid cancer mortality is caused by metastatic disease, there is an urgent need to elucidate the mechanisms of thyroid cancer migration and metastasis. While the mechanisms behind thyroid cancer metastasis remains in its infancy, remarkable advancements in genomics, traditional 2-dimensional cell culture, murine models, and 3-dimensional cultures have yielded new insight. This review outlines methodological approaches that can be used to investigate thyroid cancer migration and metastases and in doing so will highlight a number of recent findings that have utilized these approaches.