Molecular regulation of autophagy related genes in papillary thyroid carcinoma

Background: Thyroid papillary carcinoma is the most common clinical thyroid malignancy. Autophagy is related to the occurrence and development of tumors. However, there is no report about the correlation between autophagy protein expression and biological characteristics of thyroid papillary carcinoma and lymph node metastasis. Therefore, the authors studied the relationship between autophagy protein expression and thyroid papillary carcinoma. Methods: In this study, we detected the mRNA and protein expressions of LC3, Beclin1, ATG2b, ATG3, ATG4a, ATG4b, ATG4c, ATG5, ATG7 and ATG10 in papillary thyroid carcinoma patients’ blood. Results: We found that the expression of Beclin1 and LC3 in blood of the patients was significantly higher than that of the normal group, suggesting that the autophagic activity was enhanced in the thyroid tumor. Discussion: The results show that autophagy is associated with the occurrence and the progression of papillary thyroid carcinoma. The autophagy can become a new therapeutic target, especially to prevent the recurrence of postoperative cervical lymph node recurrence in papillary thyroid carcinoma.