TERT and cancer: Overwhelming studies have demonstrated that a number of genetic alterations, including hotspot mutations and fusions in some key cancer driver genes like BRAF, RAS, RET, EIF1AX and telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), orchestrated the initiation and progression of thyroid cancer by upregulating the expression of certain oncogenes and downregulating the expression of tumor suppressor genes (4–6).