Wang Wenjian, He Xiaotian, Zheng Zehua, Ma Xiaofan, Hu Xueting, Wu Duoguang, Wang Minghui
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Department of Thoracic surgery, Sun yat-sen memorial hospital, Sun yat-sen University, NO.107 of Yanjiangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510120, China.
Mol Cancer. 2017 Apr 4;16(1):75. doi: 10.1186/s12943-017-0643-6.
Early 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.
In 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.
Clinical 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.
Our study, for the first time, demonstrated that serum HOTAIR might serve as a potential biomarker for the diagnosis of ESCC.
食管鳞状细胞癌（ESCC）的早期诊断是改善预后的重要问题。HOX转录本反义RNA（HOTAIR）是一种从HOXC基因座表达的长链非编码RNA（lncRNA），最近已被揭示为ESCC中的一种致癌调节因子。本研究旨在探讨血清HOTAIR是否参与ESCC的诊断。
在本研究中，我们使用定量实时聚合酶链反应（qRT-PCR）方法检测了50例ESCC患者（包括42例行肿瘤切除术和8例未手术者）和20名健康志愿者的血清HOTAIR表达，以研究血清HOTAIR在ESCC中的作用。
临床数据表明血清HOTAIR与TNM分期相关。ESCC患者血清HOTAIR的表达水平（0.189±0.010）显著高于健康对照组（0.055±0.008，P<0.01）。ROC曲线分析得出ROC曲线下面积（AUC）值为0.793（95%CI：0.692至0.895，P<0.01）。此外，与术前标本相比，术后样本（手术后1个月）中血清HOTAIR表达水平明显下降。而且，根据Pearson相关性分析，血清HOTAIR表达与ESCC组织中HOTAIR的表达之间存在显著相关性。
我们的研究首次表明血清HOTAIR可能作为ESCC诊断的潜在生物标志物。
