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¹ Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Biomediche, Università di Udine, Piazzale Kolbe 1, 33100 Udine, Italy² Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria ‘S Maria della Misericordia’ Udine, Udine, Italy³ Dipartimento di Ricerche Mediche e Morfologiche, Università di Udine, Udine, Italy⁴ Dipartimento di Medicina Interna, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy⁵ Dipartimento di Scienze Cliniche, Università di Roma ‘la Sapienza’, Roma, Italy⁶ Dipartimento di Scienze Farmacobiologiche, Università di Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy

(Correspondence should be addressed to G Damante; Email: gdamante{at}makek.dstb.uniud.it)

Periostin is a mesenchyme-specific gene product, which acts as an adhesion molecule during bone formation and supports osteoblastic cell line attachment and spreading. However, periostin expression is activated in a large variety of epithelial human tumors and correlates with their aggressiveness. Knowledge of expression of periostin in thyroid tumors is still scanty. The aim of the present work was to investigate periostin expression in differentiated neoplasms of the thyroid and to correlate it with several clinical and molecular features of these tumors. Periostin expression was evaluated by quantitative PCR and immunohistochemistry in normal thyroid tissues, papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs), follicular thyroid carcinomas (FTCs), and follicular adenomas (FAs). Periostin mRNA levels were also evaluated in several thyroid tumor cell lines. PTCs show mean periostin mRNA levels significantly higher than corresponding normal tissues. In five PTCs, periostin mRNA values were at least 30-fold higher than corresponding normal tissues. Conversely, mean periostin mRNA levels of FTCs and FAs were similar to those of normal tissues. Consistent with mRNA studies, periostin was detectable by immunohistochemistry in cancerous epithelial cells only in several cases of PTCs but not in normal tissue, FTCs, and FAs. In PTCs, periostin mRNA levels positively correlate with extrathyroidal invasion, distant metastasis, and higher grade staging. A negative correlation between periostin and expression of some markers of the thyroid-differentiated phenotype (thyroglobulin, thyrotropin receptor) was also present in the PTCs. These results indicate that an increase in periostin gene expression is present in several PTCs, in which it appears as a marker of aggressiveness. Experiments in thyroid tumor cell lines indicate that high levels of periostin mRNA are due, at least in part, to the increase in periostin promoter activity.