Upregulated lncRNA-UCA1 contributes to progression of lung cancer and is closely related to clinical diagnosis as a predictive biomarker in plasma

Abstract

Objective: Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to play an important regulatory roles in cancer biology, and the lncRNA-UCA1 is upregulated in several cancers such as bladder cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer, however, the contributions of UCA1 to non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remain largely unknown. Methods: Expression levels of lncRNA-UCA1 in tumor tissues and plasma from NSCLC patients was evaluated by quantitative real-time PCR, and its association with overall survival of patients was analyzed by statistical analysis. Moreover, the UCA1 expression correlation between tumor tissues and plasma was demonstrated by linear regression analysis. Results: the results showed that the expression of UCA1 in NSCLC tissues was obviously higher than that observed in pair-matched adjacent nontumourous tissues, (P < 0.001). The agarose gel electrophoretogram of RT-PCR products further confirmed that UCA1 was increased in NSCLC tissues. To assess the correlation of UCA1 expression with Clinicopathological data, we found that the expression level of UCA1 was associate with histological grade (P < 0.001) and lymph node metastasis (P < 0.001). Intriguingly, the expression of UCA1 was significantly increased in plasma from NSCLC patients. The UCA1 expression measurements obtained from plasma and tumor tissues were strongly correlated in 60 patient samples (r = 0.881). By receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis, plasma UCA1 provided the highly diagnostic performance for detection of NSCLC (the area under the ROC curve (AUC), 0.886; P < 0.001). In conclusion, the current results indicated that Plasma UCA1 could serve as a potential biomarker for diagnosis of NSCLC. UCA1 as a biomarker in clinical application might significantly improve the efficacy of human NSCLC screening.