Key Discovery in Thyroid Cancer has been made by Saudi Researchers at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSHRC). The Hospital issued the following press release: Thyroid cancer is uncommon in the west but is alarmingly common in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This explains in part why little has been published on this cancer from North American and European academic institutes. Stepping up to the challenge, a group of researchers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia led by Prof. Khawla Al-Kuraya have been hard at work trying to understand thyroid cancer better. Building on many years of published experience, the team has just published a landmark paper that provides many novel insights into the inner workings of thyroid cancer. "This is the largest study of its kind in thyroid cancer to date" explains Prof. Al-Kuraya, who directs the Research Center at King Fahad National Children's Cancer Center of King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre. By fully sequencing the coding genome of more than 100 thyroid cancer patients, Prof. Al-Kuraya's team was able to identify a number of novel genes that have not been linked before to cancer. "Most exciting in this discovery cohort was our finding that thyroglobulin, a key gene to thyroid function, appeared to sustain repeated damaging events mostly in patients with very aggressive disease", explains Prof. Al-Kuraya, "we were especially intrigued by the possibility that damaged thyroglobulin somehow enhances metastasis". Metastasis is a final common eventuality of nearly all cancers and is usually what kills patients in cancer rather than primary disease. In metastasis, the primary cancer manages to shoot some of its cells through blood to distant organs where they seed and replicate the cancer there albeit in a much more aggressive fashion. Surprisingly, very little is known about what drives metastasis in cancer. "Consistent with the hypothesis, we found that metastasis was much more likely to harbor damaged thyroglobulin. More importantly, we found evidence that a very rare damaging event to thyroglobulin in the primary thyroid cancer becomes very common in the metastasis. This strongly suggests this damage was a key process in driving the cancer tissue to metastasize", explains Prof. Al-Kuraya. The potential clinical implication of this key discovery is huge since it can help classify patients who are more likely to develop metastasis so they can undergo more aggressive treatment and surveillance. Furthermore, identifying key drivers of metastasis are in hot pursuit by big pharma as promising drug targets. The study was quickly accepted by the prestigious American Journal of Human Genetics, the official journal of the American Society of Human Genetics. "I was truly flattered by the very encouraging comments we received from the other scientists who reviewed our manuscript, a testimony to the impact of this discovery" explains Prof. Al-Kuraya who adds "I'm indebted to the very generous support I received from the Saudi Government who fully believed in my work and understood that high quality research requires generous funding".