Expression of long non-coding RNA AFAP1-AS1 in human digestive system cancer and its clinical significance / 肿瘤

ABSTRACT

Objective: To investigate the expressions of actin filament-associated protein 1 antisense RNA 1 (AFAP1-AS1), a long non-coding RNA (IncRNA) in four common human digestive system cancers including esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer and colorectal cancer, and their clinical significance. Methods: The expression of AFAP1-AS1 was preliminarily detected in several digestive system tumor tissues and their corresponding adjacent normal tissues from 82 cases by multi-tumor tissue microarrays. These 82 patients included 11 with esophageal cancer, 11 with gastric cancer, 26 with liver cancer, and 34 with colorectal cancer. The expression of AFAP1-AS1 which had significant difference in liver tumor tissues was further tested by in situ hybridization (additional 70 cases) and real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR (additional 30 cases). The relationship between the expression of AFAP1-AS1 and the clinicopathological features was analyzed. The role of AFAP1-AS1 in tumor lymph node metastasis was assessed. Results: The expression of AFAP1-AS1 in liver cancer was significantly lower than that in its corresponding adjacent normal liver tissue (P 0.05). Further test also revealed that the expression of AFAP1-AS1 was significantly down-regulated in liver cancer, and this effect was associated with clinical stage and lymph node metastasis (P < 0.05). The sensitivity, specificity, coincidence rate, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of AFAP1-AS1 serving as a molecular marker of metastasis were 68.75%, 65.00%, 65.63%, 28.21% and 91.23%, respectively. Conclusion: The expression of AFAP1-AS1 may play a role in the pathogenesis and progression of liver cancer and esophageal cancer, but this effect is different between these two cancer types. It is suggested that AFAP1-AS1 may become a noval molecular marker for clinical diagnosis of liver cancer. Copyright© 2014 by TUMOR.