Microarray expression profiling identifies genes, including cytokines, and biofunctions, as diapedesis, associated with a brain metastasis from a papillary thyroid carcinoma

Brain metastatic papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs) are afflicted with unfavorable prognosis; however, the underlying molecular genetics of these rare metastases are virtually unknown. In this study, we compared whole transcript microarray expression profiles of a BRAF mutant, brain metastasisfrom a PTC, including its technical replicate (TR), with eight non-brain metastatic PTCs and eight primary brain tumors. The top 95 probe sets ( false discovery rate(FDR) p-value 2) that were differentially expressed between the brain metastatic PTC, including the TR, and both, non-brain metastatic PTCs and primary brain tumorswere in the vast majority upregulated and comprise, e.g. ROS1, MYBPH, SLC18A3, HP, SAA2-SAA4, CP, CCL20, GFAP, RNU1-120P, DMBT1, XDH, CXCL1, PI3, and NAPSA. Cytokines were represented by 10 members in the top 95 probe sets. Pathway and network analysis (p-value 2) identified granulocytes adhesion and diapedesis as top canonical pathway. Most significant upstream regulators were lipopolysaccharide, TNF, NKkB (complex), IL1A, and CSF2. Top networks categorized under diseases & functions were entitled migration of cells, cell movement, cell survival, apoptosis, and proliferation of cells. Probe sets that were significantly shared between the brain metastatic PTC, the TR, and primary brain tumorsinclude CASP1, CASP4, C1R, CC2D2B, RNY1P16, WDR72, LRRC2, ZHX2, CITED1, and the noncoding transcript {"type":" entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"AK128523","term_id":"34535931","term_text":"AK128523"}}AK128523. Taken together, this study identified a set of candidate genes and biofunctions implicated in, so far nearly uncharacterized, molecular processes of a brain metastasisfrom a PTC.