Veracyte, Inc. announced data that provide new insights into thyroid tumor behavior. The findings were derived from whole-transcriptome analyses of Veracyte’s thyroid nodule database and were presented at the American Thyroid Association Annual Meeting, held October 19-23 in Montreal.
In one study, Veracyte researchers reviewed over 300 pathology reports from the training sets used to develop the company’s Afirma Genomic Sequencing Classifier (GSC). Levels of tumor invasion and metastasis were scored and tested against over 400 literature-derived gene expression signatures to identify potential predictors of these tumor behaviors. They found that the top-performing signatures were able to stratify nodules as low-risk with a negative predictive value for no invasion or metastasis of 95% and 100%, respectively. Conversely, the highest-performing signatures had a positive predictive value of 57% for invasion and 41% for metastasis.
Additional data presented at the ATA conference demonstrate the Afirma GSC’s ability to inform diagnosis and treatment decisions for patients with thyroid nodules. While thyroid stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR) mutations are mostly associated with benign thyroid nodules, researchers found that when the Afirma GSC identified a thyroid nodule with a TSHR mutation and a result that was “suspicious” for cancer, the risk of malignancy was significantly higher at 15.3%, compared to those classified by the Afirma GSC as benign where the extrapolated risk is <1.5%.
