Department of Laboratory Medicine, Zhengzhou People's Hospital, 33 Huanghe Road, Zhengzhou 450003, China.
Biomed Res Int. 2013;2013:136106. doi: 10.1155/2013/136106. Epub 2013 May 22.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a leading cause of cancer death in many Asian and African countries. Lack of early diagnosis tools is one of the clinical obstacles for effective treatment of HCC. Thus, enhanced understanding of the molecular changes associated with HCC is urgently needed to develop novel strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of this dismal disease. While aberrant expression of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) has been functionally associated with certain cancers, the expression profiles and biological relevance of lncRNAs in HCC remain unclear. Highly upregulated in liver cancer (HULC) lncRNA has been implicated in the regulation of hepatoma cell proliferation. In this study, we demonstrate that HULC expression is significantly higher in HCC tumors compared to normal liver tissues. Among the tumor tissues, higher HULC expression is positively associated with Edmondson histological grades or with hepatitis B (HBV) positive status. Moreover, HULC lncRNA is detected with higher frequency in the plasma of HCC patients compared to healthy controls. Higher HULC detection rates are observed in the plasma of patients with higher Edmondson grades or with HBV+ status. These findings indicate for the first time that the expression of HULC in plasma can be used as a noninvasive promising novel biomarker for the diagnosis and/or prognosis of HCC.
肝细胞癌（HCC）是许多亚洲和非洲国家癌症死亡的主要原因。缺乏早期诊断工具是 HCC 有效治疗的临床障碍之一。因此，迫切需要增强对与 HCC 相关的分子变化的理解，以开发用于诊断和治疗这种恶性疾病的新策略。虽然长链非编码 RNA（lncRNA）的异常表达与某些癌症的功能有关，但 lncRNA 在 HCC 中的表达谱和生物学相关性仍不清楚。在肝癌中高度上调的 lncRNA（HULC）已被证明参与调节肝癌细胞的增殖。在这项研究中，我们证明 HULC 在 HCC 肿瘤中的表达明显高于正常肝组织。在肿瘤组织中，较高的 HULC 表达与 Edmondson 组织学分级或乙型肝炎病毒（HBV）阳性状态呈正相关。此外，与健康对照组相比，HCC 患者的血浆中检测到更高频率的 HULC lncRNA。在具有较高 Edmondson 分级或 HBV+状态的患者的血浆中观察到更高的 HULC 检测率。这些发现首次表明，血浆中 HULC 的表达可以用作 HCC 诊断和/或预后的非侵入性有前途的新型生物标志物。
