New hope for patients with {BRAF} V600E-mutant anaplastic thyroid cancer: lights and shadows

Patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) are all considered stage IV in the American Joint Committee on Cancer staging manual, due to the poor prognosis of this undifferentiated form of follicular-cell derived thyroid cancer. Standard therapeutic approaches (such as surgery and radioiodine therapy) are not effective. The historical median survival from diagnosis is about 5 months (ranging from 3 to 8 months if disease is initially confined to the neck). Half of all deaths are attributable to upper airway obstruction, while the rest stem from complications of distant disease or therapies