2017 Volume 63 Issue 2 Pages 47-54
Patients with thyroid cancer are normally treated with surgery, while patients with advanced cancer are usually treated with radioactive iodine. However, there is no effective treatment for patients with radioiodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer (RR-DTC). As a result, such patients are generally treated with radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Lenvatinib has been approved in Japan for the treatment of RR-DTC since May 2015, and is a potent oral Tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) of different growth factor receptors, including VEGFR and FGFR. However,this molecular target drug has been reported to be associated with some side effects. We herein report 5 cases that were treated with lenvatinib, including 3 cases of papillary carcinoma, 1 case of squamous cell carcinoma, and 1 case of papillary carcinoma with squamous cell carcinoma. The main side effects were hypertension, fatigue, loss of appetite, and stomatitis. This drug was effective for 2 of 3 patients with papillary carcinoma, and this proportion is roughly in agreement with the findings of previous studies. Patients with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) tend to show progressive disease. On the other hand, lenvatinib has been shown to be effective for only primary lesion in one of patients with SCC, but not for metastatic lesions. There has so far been no report of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of thyroid cancer that were successfully treated with lenvatinib, and therefore further studies are needed.
