Endocrine cancers, studied for the boards and then largely forgotten by medical oncologists, comprise a set of rare but very interesting tumors with a diverse clinical spectrum. Few tumors are more aggressive than adrenocortical cancer or more lethal than anaplastic thyroid cancer. And few are more indolent than pituitary tumors, parathyroid tumors, or papillary thyroid tumors, where a subset is now proposed to be reclassified as benign. Endocrine cancers are often difficult to differentiate from their benign counterparts; their ability to synthesize hormones underscores their differentiated phenotypes.
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