Of late, recurrent promoter mutations in the telomerase reverse transcriptase gene have been intimately coupled to subsets of well-differentiated thyroid cancer specimen with aggressive clinical characteristics as well as less differentiated forms of thyroid cancer with exceedingly poor prognosis.
We have characterized TERT promoter methylation, transcription factor binding, and TERT expression levels in five differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) cell lines and six normal thyroid tissue samples by targeted bisulfite sequencing, ChIP-qPCR, and qRT-PCR.
TERTC228T is far more common than TERTC250T and their collective prevalence is, on average, 0, 11.3, 17.1, 43.2 and 40.1% in benign thyroid tumors, papillary thyroid cancer (PTC), follicular thyroid cancer, poorly differentiated thyroid cancer and anaplastic thyroid cancer, respectively, displaying an association with aggressive types of thyroid cancer.