The lncRNA MALAT1 is a novel biomarker for gastric cancer metastasis.

Yucheng Zhang,Ying Chen,Feng Bi,Weibing Leng,Dandan Yuan,Xiaojun Ge,Hongwei Xia,Qiyong Gong,Qiulin Tang,Qingjuan Chen,Ming Liu,Ming Ren,Liang Chen

doi:10.18632/oncotarget.10941

Abstract

The metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) is frequently over-expressed and serves as a prognostic marker in human cancers. However, little is known about the role of MALAT1 in gastric cancer. Here, we reported that the tissue and plasma MALAT1 levels were significantly higher in gastric cancer patients with distant metastasis (P<0.01) than patients without distant metastasis and the healthy controls. In addition, high levels of plasma MALAT1 independently correlated to a poor prognosis for gastric cancer patients (hazard ratio, 0.242; 95% CI, 0.154-0.836; P=0.036; Cox regression analysis). Functional studies revealed that knockdown of MALAT1 could inhibit cell proliferation, cell cycle progression, migration and invasion, and promote apoptosis in gastric cancer cells. Furthermore, the miR-122-IGF-1R signaling correlated with the dysregulated MALAT1 expression in gastric cancer. These data suggest that MALAT1 could function as an oncogene in gastric cancer, and high MALAT1 level could serve as a potential biomarker for the distant metastasis of gastric cancer.

Highlights

Gastric cancer (GC) is the fourth common cancer and the second leading cancer-related cause of death worldwide [1, 2]
Q-PCR was performed to detect the levels of metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) in the tissues, and the results indicated that the MALAT1 levels was significantly higher in GC/DM cancer tissues (C-DM) than that of the adjacent normal tissues (N-DM) (P< 0.0001) and the GC/NDM cancer tissues (C-NDM) (P=0.0134), while there is nearly no difference between the GC/NDM tissues and the adjacent normal tissues (Figure 1A, 1B, Supplementary Figure S1)
Using the AUC of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to estimate the diagnostic value of plasma MALAT1 in discerning distant metastasis in GCs, we found that the plasma levels of MALAT1 could effectively distinguish patients with GC/DM from patients with GC/NDM and the healthy controls (HC) (Figure 1C and 1D)

Summary

Introduction

Gastric cancer (GC) is the fourth common cancer and the second leading cancer-related cause of death worldwide [1, 2]. The miR-122-IGF-1R signaling correlated with the deregulated MALAT1 expression in gastric cancer cells. We systematically examined the MALAT1 levels in the plasma of 36 healthy controls (HC) and 72 gastric cancer patients, including 36 GC/NDM and 36 GC/ We performed Q-PCR to examine the expression of MALAT1 in gastric cancer cell lines.

Results

Conclusion