Long non-coding RNA promotes gastric cancer cell proliferation and predicts poor patient survival.

Gastric cancer (GC) is a common malignancy worldwide and its pathogenesis remains unclear. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) serve an important function in cancer development, therefore identification of functional lncRNAs in GC is required. The results of the present study demonstrate that an lncRNA, , was increased in GC tissues compared with adjacent non-tumor tissues. Overexpression of was positively associated with poor survival rate, as well as with the tumor size of patients with GC. knockdown induced by specific small interfering RNAs significantly inhibited GC cell proliferation . Genome-wide analysis revealed that knockdown deregulated the cell cycle. Western blot analysis confirmed that knockdown decreased protein expression of cyclin D1 and cyclin E1 in GC cells. Taken together, the results indicated that knockdown suppressed GC cell proliferation through deregulating the cell cycle, resulting in the downregulation of cyclin D1 and cyclin E1. Therefore, expression may be an independent biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of GC.