{
  "abstract": "Background: Polystyrene microplastics (PS-MPs) are emerging environmental contaminants with endocrine-disrupting and pro-inflammatory effects, but whether PS-MPs-associated molecular targets converge with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) alterations remains unclear. This hypothesis-generating study aimed to identify candidate molecular networks and cellular contexts shared between a simplified polystyrene computational proxy and PTC.\n\nMethods: Putative targets from CTD and from TargetNet/SwissTargetPrediction using a five-styrene-unit oligomer proxy were intersected with thyroid cancer-related genes from OMIM and GeneCards. Protein functional-association and enrichment analyses were followed by differential expression analysis in GSE33630 (45 normal and 49 PTC samples). LASSO and SVM-RFE identified core genes; stability was examined by repeated nested resampling conditional on the seven-gene candidate panel. Individual-gene tumor-normal discrimination was assessed in GSE33630 and GSE60542. Protein patterns were evaluated qualitatively in the Human Protein Atlas and preliminarily in 15 matched PTC-adjacent tissue pairs. CIBERSORT-estimated immune fractions and two single-cell datasets were analyzed as exploratory context.\n\nResults: Among 144 putative proxy-associated targets and 2,139 thyroid cancer-related genes, 75 were shared. Seven candidates overlapped with 1,306 PTC differentially expressed genes, and BCL2, BAX, and FN1 were selected by both feature-selection methods and remained stable across the tested GeneCards thresholds and CTD-only sensitivity analysis. BCL2 was downregulated, whereas BAX and FN1 were upregulated in PTC; individual-gene AUCs were 0.963, 0.941, and 0.965 in GSE33630 and 0.942, 0.907, and 0.955 in GSE60542. HPA images and clinical IHC supported the same protein-level directions. After multiple-testing correction, only the CIBERSORT-estimated neutrophil fraction differed between groups (higher in PTC; q=0.0021). Single-cell analysis localized the three genes across epithelial, stromal, and immune compartments.\n\nConclusion: BCL2, BAX, and FN1 are candidate molecular nodes at the convergence of polystyrene-proxy annotations and PTC-associated alterations. The findings do not demonstrate patient PS-MPs exposure, intact-particle effects, or causality, and require validation in material-characterized exposure experiments and exposure-aware clinical studies.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The First Hospital of Jiaxing (Affiliated Hospital of Jiaxing University)"
  ],
  "article_type": "research article",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 3,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Weidong Xie"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Jian Tang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Xiaoyu Qian"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f37cb8fsx6s05.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.3389/fendo.2026.1942165",
  "fulltext_url": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13713425",
  "id": "f37cb8fsx6s05",
  "issns": [
    "1664-2392"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2026.1942165/full",
  "language": "eng",
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "heading",
      "Original Research"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2712|Thyroid Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221781873",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/endocrinology/articles/10.3389/fendo.2026.1942165/pdf",
  "pmcid": "PMC13713425",
  "pmid": "42952571",
  "published": "2026-10-14",
  "publisher": "Frontiers Media SA",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f37cb8fsx6s05.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:20:20Z",
      "native_id": "10.3389/fendo.2026.1942165",
      "source": "crossref",
      "url": "https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2026.1942165/full"
    },
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-31T00:20:34Z",
      "native_id": "MED:42952571",
      "source": "europepmc",
      "url": "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42952571"
    },
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-31T12:23:58Z",
      "native_id": "PMC13713425",
      "source": "pmc",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2026.1942165"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "openalex:2712|Thyroid Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment",
      "subfield": "endocrinology-metabolism"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Hypothesis-generating network toxicology analysis of potential molecular convergence between a polystyrene oligomer proxy and papillary thyroid carcinoma",
  "title_text": "Hypothesis-generating network toxicology analysis of potential molecular convergence between a polystyrene oligomer proxy and papillary thyroid carcinoma",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-01T12:21:06Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f37cb8fsx6s05",
  "venue": "Frontiers in Endocrinology",
  "versions": []
}