Two main aspects hinder however the widespreaduse of calcitonin for MTC diagnosis.24 First,the low incidence of this carcinoma makes it less competitive to implementcurrent testing methods, mainly due to its high costs.25 Second, calcitonin has a low half-life, whichis easily degraded in the serum by proteases. The gene discussed is CALCA; the disease is medullary thyroid gland carcinoma.