LncRNA expression profile reveals the potential role of lncRNAs in gastric carcinogenesis.

Gastric cancer ranks the second highest death rate and is the highest morbidity digestive system malignancy in China. Few reports have elucidated the role of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the gastric cancer pathogenesis. The present study was aimed to identify aberrantly expressed lncRNAs involved in the progression of gastric cancer and explored their potential functions. A total of 1,297 lncRNAs and 2,037 mRNAs that showed significantly differential expression level between gastric tumor samples and matched adjacent normal tissues were identified in six pairs of samples using microarray assay. To further explore their functions, lncRNAs were classified into different subgroups and mRNAs were clustered into several pathways. The expression level of 4 lncRNAs: UCA1, lincRNA-BBOX1-2, CR594506 and BC015134 were further confirmed in another cohort of 10 gastric patients by real-time PCR assay. A coding-non-coding co-expression network revealed that the four validated lncRNAs were correlated with twenty-six mRNAs which gave clues about the potential roles of these lncRNAs in the process of gastric cancer progression.