# Samuel A. Wells Jr.

Source: https://onco.cc/people/samuel-wells/  
OnCo record `samuel-wells` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

American surgeon who pioneered removing the thyroid in children with inherited RET mutations before cancer develops, led ZETA, the trial that established vandetanib for medullary thyroid cancer, and chaired the American Thyroid Association guideline for the disease.

## Summary

Samuel Wells Jr. is an endocrine surgeon whose career spanned Duke University, Washington University in St Louis and the National Cancer Institute. He showed that prophylactic thyroidectomy guided by RET mutation testing prevents medullary thyroid cancer in multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2. He was first author of the 2012 Journal of Clinical Oncology report of ZETA, the phase 3 trial in which vandetanib lengthened progression-free survival in advanced medullary thyroid cancer, the first drug approved for the disease, and chaired the 2015 American Thyroid Association guideline.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-18
- Tags: thyroid; surgery; trialist
- Role: Endocrine surgeon and clinical investigator
- Specialisms: Medullary thyroid cancer; Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2; Prophylactic thyroidectomy

## Connected records

- cancers: [Medullary thyroid cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/medullary-thyroid-cancer/), [Thyroid cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/thyroid/)
- institutions: [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/)
- trials: [ZETA](https://onco.cc/trials/zeta/)
- key papers: [Revised American Thyroid Association guidelines for the management of medullary thyroid carcinoma](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-ata-medullary-thyroid-guideline-wells-thyroid-2015/), [ZETA: vandetanib in locally advanced or metastatic medullary thyroid cancer](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-zeta-vandetanib-mtc-wells-jco-2012/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/samuel-wells.json