Serum HOTAIR as a novel diagnostic biomarker for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Wenjian Wang,Zehua Zheng,Xiaofan Ma,Xueting Hu,Minghui Wang,Xiaotian He,Duoguang Wu

doi:10.1186/s12943-017-0643-6

Wenjian Wang, Zehua Zheng + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12943-017-0643-6

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Abstract

BackgroundEarly diagnosis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is an important issue to improve the prognosis. HOX transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR), a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) expressed from the HOXC locus, has been recently revealed as an oncogenic regulator in ESCC. This study aimed to investigate whether serum HOTAIR is involved in the diagnosis of ESCC.MethodsIn this study, we detected serum HOTAIR expression in 50 patients with ESCC (including 42 tumor resection and 8 without surgery) and 20 healthy volunteers to investigate the role of serum HOTAIR in ESCC using the quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) method.ResultsClinical data indicated that serum HOTAIR were correlated with TNM stage. The expression level of serum HOTAIR (0.189 ± 0.010) was significantly higher in ESCC patients compared with that of healthy controls (0.055 ± 0.008, P < 0.01). The ROC curve analysis yielded an area under the ROC curve (AUC) value of 0.793 (95% CI: 0.692 to 0.895, P < 0.01). Also, the serum HOTAIR expression level decreased obviously in postoperative samples (one month after the surgery) compared to preoperative specimens. Moreover, there was a significant correlation between serum HOTAIR expression and the expression of HOTAIR in ESCC tissue according to Pearson correlation analysis.ConclusionsOur study, for the first time, demonstrated that serum HOTAIR might serve as a potential biomarker for the diagnosis of ESCC.

Highlights

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the major histopathological subtype of esophageal cancer [1, 2]
The advances in medical and surgical treatments, most esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage with a poor prognosis, an overall five-year survival ranging from 15–25% [5]
Clinicopathological characteristics and serum HOX transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR) expression levels of ESCC patients As shown in Table 1, the expression level of serum HOTAIR was closely associated with TNM stage (P = 0.002)

Summary

Introduction

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the major histopathological subtype of esophageal cancer [1, 2]. Early detection of primary tumors provides effective treatments and timely interventions, Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), such as microRNAs, small interfering RNAs, and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), play important regulatory roles in the development of many diseases especially in cancers [7, 8]. The lncRNAs, defined as RNA molecules >200 nucleotides in length, have been shown to be involved in the regulation of gene expression in both tumor-suppressive and oncogenic pathways at epigenetic level, transcriptional level, and posttranscriptional level [9, 10]. Diagnosis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is an important issue to improve the prognosis. HOX transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR), a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) expressed from the HOXC locus, has been recently revealed as an oncogenic regulator in ESCC. This study aimed to investigate whether serum HOTAIR is involved in the diagnosis of ESCC

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