Thyroid Cancer Spurs Researcher

By David Robinson

Researcher Aime Franco, Ph.D., beat thyroid cancer and now spends her time searching for new treatments.

Jan. 12, 2012 | For Aime Franco, Ph.D., her job as a thyroid cancer researcher is personal. Diagnosed at age 22 with the disease, she beat it and wants her research to help other patients survive as well.

Thyroid cancer continues to maintain a steadily increasing incidence rate across the country. Franco is focused on how environmental and genetic factors influence the increased rates and how understanding those factors can help lead to new treatment options for thyroid cancer patients who develop advanced, less responsive forms of the disease.

“Thyroid cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer of the endocrine system,” said Franco, assistant professor in the UAMS Department of Physiology and Biophysics. “It affects the thyroid gland, which controls metabolism in the body.”

The endocrine system is a collection of glands throughout the body that produce hormones that regulate growth, metabolism, and sexual development and function. The thyroid gland is a key gland in the system and along with controlling metabolism also stimulates body heat production and bone growth.

“The focus of my work is on advanced thyroid cancer, trying to understand what causes a more ‘differentiated/treatable cancer’ in its early stages to advance to a ‘poor and nonresponsive cancer,’ and then trying to develop new therapies for those cancers,” said Franco. “About 90 percent of patients diagnosed with thyroid cancer respond very well to treatment, but the remaining 10 percent don’t have any real treatment options available.”

Although new to the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), Franco has a long history with the disease. “I am so passionate about learning how the disease works because I know what it’s like to be a patient,” Franco said.

Franco contributes her experience as a patient as a factor in choosing to come to UAMS from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “I hope to collaborate with a lot of the clinicians in the Cancer Institute so we can really translate what I’m doing in the laboratory into better patient care,” she said.

Franco’s research is focused on how thyroid cancer initially is diagnosed in patients and how and why it progresses. “I want to develop better ways to diagnose and treat thyroid cancer for those patients who are more likely to go on to develop a more advanced, less responsive form of the disease,” Franco said. “We want to catch the disease early enough that patients don’t make it to the stage where there aren’t valid treatment options.”

In addition to research, Franco also serves on the American Association of Cancer Research’s Policy and Legislative Affairs Committee and speaks to legislators in Congress about the importance of funding cancer research.

According to the American Cancer Society more than 48,000 people will be diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2011, which is 3,000 more than were diagnosed in 2010. Women are three times more likely to develop the disease than men.