Department of Laboratory Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, Nantong, China.
Research Center of Clinical Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, Nantong, China.
Exp Hematol. 2019 Nov;79:47-55.e2. doi: 10.1016/j.exphem.2019.10.002. Epub 2019 Oct 21.
Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have increasingly been found to be key mediators of tumor biology and to have potential diagnostic value as biomarkers of particular forms of cancer. TUG1 (taurine-upregulated gene 1) is an lncRNA that has been found to be upregulated in a range of different cancer types, but levels of its expression in the serum of patients with multiple myeloma (MM) are uncertain, as is its diagnostic relevance in such a population. This study therefore explored whether TUG1 levels in patient serum serve as a diagnostic biomarker of MM. We analyzed serum TUG1 levels via quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction in healthy control and MM patient serum and observed clear TUG1 upregulation in MM patients (p < 0.001). We further found that the levels of TUG1 in patient serum correlated with factors including disease clinical stage, β-microglobulin, total protein, albumin, globulin, and bone injury (p < 0.05), suggesting that this lncRNA may be independently predictive of MM disease stage. We found areas under receiver operating characteristic curves as high as 0.792 (p < 0.001) for TUG1-a value higher than that for either β-microglobulin (0.747) or albumin (0.597)-with the combination of all three biomarkers improving diagnostic specificity and areas under the curve of 96.9% and 0.836, respectively (p < 0.001). Together, our results suggest that serum TUG1 levels may serve as a valuable biomarker that can help to facilitate MM diagnosis.
长链非编码 RNA（lncRNA）已被越来越多地发现是肿瘤生物学的关键介质，并具有作为特定类型癌症生物标志物的潜在诊断价值。TUG1（牛磺酸上调基因 1）是一种 lncRNA，已在多种不同类型的癌症中发现上调，但在多发性骨髓瘤（MM）患者的血清中其表达水平尚不确定，其在该人群中的诊断相关性也不确定。因此，本研究探讨了患者血清中的 TUG1 水平是否可作为 MM 的诊断生物标志物。我们通过定量实时聚合酶链反应分析了健康对照者和 MM 患者血清中的 TUG1 水平，并观察到 MM 患者的 TUG1 明显上调（p<0.001）。我们进一步发现，患者血清中 TUG1 的水平与疾病临床分期、β-微球蛋白、总蛋白、白蛋白、球蛋白和骨损伤等因素相关（p<0.05），提示该 lncRNA 可能独立预测 MM 疾病分期。我们发现 TUG1 的受试者工作特征曲线下面积高达 0.792（p<0.001），高于β-微球蛋白（0.747）或白蛋白（0.597）的 AUC 值，而三者联合可提高诊断特异性和曲线下面积，分别为 96.9%和 0.836（p<0.001）。总之，我们的研究结果表明，血清 TUG1 水平可能是一种有价值的生物标志物，有助于 MM 的诊断。
