Emerging therapeutic options for follicular-derived thyroid cancer in the era of immunotherapy.

Although most follicular-derived thyroid cancers are well differentiated and have an overall excellent prognosis following treatment with surgery and radioiodine, management of advanced thyroid cancers, including iodine refractory disease and poorly differentiated/undifferentiated subtypes, is more challenging. Over the past decade, better understanding of the genetic drivers and immune milieu of advanced thyroid cancers has led to significant progress in the management of these patients. Numerous targeted kinase inhibitors are now approved by the U.S Food and Drug administration (FDA) for the treatment of advanced, radioiodine refractory differentiated thyroid cancers (DTC) as well as anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC). Immunotherapy has also been thoroughly studied and has shown promise in selected cases. In this review, we summarize the progress in the understanding of the genetic landscape and the cellular and molecular basis of radioiodine refractory-DTC and ATC, as well as discuss the current treatment options and future therapeutic avenues.

Characterization and quantification of fruit phenolic compounds of European and Tunisian pear cultivars.

The flesh and peel of 19 pear cultivars (8 Tunisian dessert cultivars, 8 European dessert cultivars and 3 French perry pear cultivars) were studied for their phenolic composition. Phenolic compounds were identified by HPLC/ESI-MS2 and individually quantified by HPLC-DAD. Five classes of polyphenols were present: flavan-3-ols, phenolic acids, flavonols, anthocyanins and simple phenolics (hydroquinones). The total phenolic content ranged between 0.1g/kg Fresh Weight (FW) ('Conference' cultivar) and 8.6g/kg FW ('Plant De Blanc' cultivar) in the flesh and between 1.6g/kg FW ('William vert' cultivar) and 40.4g/kg FW ('Arbi Chiheb' cultivar) in the peel. Procyanidins, analyzed after thioacidolysis, were the main phenolic compounds in all pear cultivars either in the pulp or the peel, their constitutive units being essentially (-)-epicatechin. Tunisian dessert pears and French perry pears are richer in procyanidins with very high degree of polymerization (>100) for Tunisian pears. Peel procyanidins were less polymerized (from 4 to 20). Pear peel phenolic profile was more complex especially for Tunisian cultivars, with flavonols and in some cultivars anthocyanins.