Overexpression of lncRNA MNX1-AS1 is associated with poor clinical outcome in epithelial ovarian cancer.

Abstract

Long non-coding RNAs MNX1-AS1(MNX1-AS1) has been proved to be associated with ovarian cancer proliferation and invasion. However, the clinical significance of MNX1-AS1 in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) patients remains unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate the prognostic value of the MNX1-AS1 expression in EOC. We first measured MNX1-AS1 expression level in 177 paired of EOC and matched normal tissues by Real-time quantitative RT-PCR. The relevance of MNX1-AS1 expression to the clinicopathological factors was assessed. Overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS) were analyzed by log-rank test, and survival curves were plotted according to Kaplan-Meier. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to analyze the prognostic significance of MNX1-AS1 expression. We found that the levels of MNX1-AS1 were higher in EOC tissue than in matched normal tissues (p<0.01). In addition, MNX1-AS1 expression level was significantly positively correlated with FIGO stage (p=0.005), grade (p=0.040) and distant metastasis (p=0.000). Kaplan-Meier survival curves demonstrated that patients with high-MNX1-AS1 expression showed poorer progression-free survival and overall survival than those with low-MNX1-AS1 expression (p<0.0001 and 0.0003, respectively). Then, Cox regression analysis revealed that FIGO stage, distant metastasis, and MNX1-AS1 expression were independent prognostic factors of both overall survival and progression-free survival for patients with EOC. Our findings indicated, for the first time, that MNX1-AS1 expression may be a useful marker for predicting the outcome in patients with EOC.