Increased expression of LncRNA BANCR is associated with clinical progression and poor prognosis in gastric cancer.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), emerging non-coding RNAs, have been proved to serve as a critical role in the proliferation, metastasis apoptosis of gastric cancer. However little is known about the clinical significance of BRAF-activated non-coding RNA (BANCR) in gastric cancer. The aim of our study is to identify the clinical value of BANCR in gastric cancer patients. Expression of BANCR was analyzed in one hundred and eighty-four gastric cancer samples using Real-time PCR. In our results, the expression of BANCR was increased in gastric cancer tissues compared with paired adjacent normal tissues. Moreover, high expression of BANCR was positively associated with clinical stage, tumor depth, lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis in gastric cancer patients. In survival analysis, high expression of BANCR was an independent unfavorable prognostic factor in gastric cancer patients. In summary, overexpression of BANCR acts as an unfavorable prognostic biomarker in gastric cancer patients.