Helene Lindfors, Ph.D. Student at the Endocrine Surgery research group, the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend her thesis “Tumor burden, thyroglobulin and Ki-67 as prognostic indicators in papillary thyroid cancer” on April 11, 2025. The main supervisor is Ivan Shabo.

What’s the main focus of your thesis?

My thesis is about prognostic factors in papillary thyroid cancer, which is the most common type of cancer in the thyroid gland. Today, treatment with surgery and radioiodine is largely based on the size and anatomical spread of the disease. We know today from other cancers that the biological properties of the tumor play an important role in the prognosis of the disease and the effects of treatment.

The thesis aims to expand knowledge about various tumor biological markers in papillary thyroid cancer and their significance for disease recurrence, says Lindfors.

What are the most important results?

We have examined various clinical and histopathological (microscopic) markers in both primary tumors and lymph node metastases in patients. The analyses show that these markers can distinguish patients with an increased risk of recurrence and that the markers of the lymph node metastasis can differ from those in the primary tumor. This is important information because the additional treatment with radioiodine, which follows surgery, is currently guided by the characteristics of the primary tumor but in practice targets any remaining lymph node metastases.

How can this knowledge contribute to the improvement of people’s health?

With these markers, risk assessment for future recurrence in patients can be improved, which means that some patients probably do not need to be followed up to the same extent as today because they have a very low risk of recurrence. The results can also select a group of patients with a clearly worse prognosis who may benefit from increased or modified additional treatment.

What are your future ambitions?

My hope is to continue research on tumor biological markers to increase knowledge and to incorporate them into guidelines for risk assessment. It would also be interesting to investigate whether the markers can be used to improve additional treatment in patients with an increased risk of recurrence.