Targeted therapies for papillary and follicular thyroid cancer

Sorafenib and lenvatinib are types of drugs called tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), or multi-kinase inhibitors. They work by blocking (inhibiting) signals in the cancer cells that make them grow and divide. They can help to shrink the cancer and control the growth, sometimes for a long time.

You take sorafenib as tablets you swallow twice a day. You take lenvatinib as capsules you swallow once a day. 

The side effects may include:

• a skin rash
• tiredness
• sore hands and feet
• feeling sick and being sick
• diarrhoea
• loss of appetite
• a sore mouth
• joint and muscle pain
• hair thinning
• high blood pressure.

Your doctor or specialist nurse will give you more information about the drugs and the possible side effects. When you first start, you usually visit the hospital every 2 weeks. This is to check how you are managing the side effects. After this, the visits will be less often.

We want everyone affected by cancer to feel our information is written for them.

We want our information to be as clear as possible. To do this, we try to:

• use plain English
• explain medical words
• use short sentences
• use illustrations to explain text
• structure the information clearly
• make sure important points are clear.

We use gender-inclusive language and talk to our readers as ‘you’ so that everyone feels included. Where clinically necessary we use the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ or ‘male’ and ‘female’. For example, we do so when talking about parts of the body or mentioning statistics or research about who is affected.

You can read more about how we produce our information here.