{"entity":{"id":"tshr","kind":"target","name":"TSH receptor (TSHR)","aka":[],"tldr":"The TSH receptor tells thyroid cells to take up iodine; recombinant TSH (thyrotropin alfa) stimulates it so that radioactive iodine can find and destroy leftover thyroid cancer.","summary":"The thyrotropin receptor on thyroid follicular cells drives iodine uptake and thyroglobulin production. After surgery for differentiated thyroid cancer, thyrotropin alfa (recombinant human TSH) stimulates the receptor on remaining normal and cancerous thyroid tissue so that radioiodine scanning and ablation work without stopping thyroid hormone replacement. Loss of TSHR and iodine transporter expression marks radioiodine-refractory disease.","asOf":"2026-09-04","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyrotropin_receptor","links":[{"label":"UniProt P16473: TSHR","url":"https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/P16473/entry"},{"label":"HGNC:12373 TSHR","url":"https://www.genenames.org/data/gene-symbol-report/#!/hgnc_id/HGNC:12373"},{"label":"ChEMBL target CHEMBL1963","url":"https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/explore/target/CHEMBL1963"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["thyroid"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":["thyrotropin-alfa"],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"symbol":"TSHR","role":[],"sources":[],"specificity":"tumour-associated","distribution":"one-type","specificityNote":"Tumour-associated overexpression: HPA finds the RNA cancer enriched in cancer (Thyroid Carcinoma (TCGA)) and tissue enriched in normal thyroid gland, so the tumour and the normal tissue it comes from share the target and the medicine relies on the difference in level. HPA TSHR: RNA tissue enriched (thyroid gland 257 nTPM); blood lineage group enriched (B-cells 2 nTPM, T-cells 7 nTPM); high antibody staining in 1 normal tissue; highest cancer staining liver cancer (1 of 11 high). Distribution: 1 cancer family in the corpus carries a prevalence row, label threshold or catalogue link for it (Thyroid cancer); Open Targets associates it with 0 specific cancer types at or above 0.5. (Rule 7 of scripts/fetch-target-specificity.ts.)","specificitySources":[{"label":"Human Protein Atlas TSHR tissue","url":"https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000165409-TSHR/tissue","note":"RNA tissue and blood lineage specificity, normal tissue antibody staining (version 25.1, CC BY-SA 3.0)"},{"label":"Human Protein Atlas TSHR pathology","url":"https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000165409-TSHR/pathology","note":"patients per staining level per cancer type (version 25.1, CC BY-SA 3.0)"},{"label":"Open Targets ENSG00000165409 associations","url":"https://platform.opentargets.org/target/ENSG00000165409/associations","note":"cancer associations at or above 0.5 (CC0)"}],"hgnc":"HGNC:12373","ensembl":"ENSG00000165409","uniprot":"P16473","entrez":"7253","firstDescribed":1989,"firstDescribedBasis":"sequence","firstDescribedNote":"Earliest sequence paper UniProt cites for the protein: Nagayama et al, Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun, 1989, \"Molecular cloning, sequence and functional expression of the cDNA for the human thyrotropin receptor\".","firstDescribedSource":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2558651/","biology":"A G protein-coupled receptor signalling through cAMP; activating mutations cause hyperfunctioning nodules.","whereFound":["Thyroid follicular cells and differentiated thyroid cancers","Lost in dedifferentiated, radioiodine-refractory tumours"],"targetClass":"other","prevalence":[{"cancerId":"thyroid","pct":"host","measure":"Host target: TSH receptor on thyroid cells, used to drive radioiodine uptake. Not a tumour alteration, so no prevalence applies; the drug acts on normal tissue or on symptoms."}]},"route":"/targets/tshr/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"papillary-thyroid-cancer","kind":"cancer","name":"Papillary thyroid cancer","route":"/cancers/papillary-thyroid-cancer/"},{"id":"thyroid","kind":"cancer","name":"Thyroid cancer","route":"/cancers/thyroid/"}],"drug":[{"id":"thyrotropin-alfa","kind":"drug","name":"Thyrotropin alfa","route":"/drugs/thyrotropin-alfa/"}]}}