Long non-coding RNA CCAT2 is up-regulated in gastric cancer and associated with poor prognosis.

INTRODUCTION: Dysregulation of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in tumor progression. The aim of our study was to explore the clinicopathologic and prognostic significance of lncRNA CCAT2 expression in human gastric cancer.

METHODS: Expression levels of lncRNA CCAT2 in 85 pairs of gastric cancer and adjacent non-tumor tissues were detected by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). In order to determine its prognostic value, overall survival and progression-free survival were evaluated using the Kaplan-Meier method, and multivariate analysis was performed using the Cox proportional hazard analysis.

RESULTS: Expression levels of lncRNA CCAT2 in gastric cancer tissues were significantly higher than those in adjacent non-tumor tissues. By statistical analyses, high lncRNA CCAT2 expression was observed to be closely correlated with higher incidence of lymph node metastasis and distance metastasis. Moreover, patients with high lncRNA CCAT2 expression had shorter overall survival and progression-free survival compared with the low lncRNA CCAT2 group. Multivariate analyses indicated that high lncRNA CCAT2 expression was an independent poor prognostic factor for gastric cancer patients.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggested that up-regulation of lncRNA CCAT2 was correlated with gastric cancer progression, and lncRNA CCAT2 might be a potential molecular biomarker for predicting the prognosis of patients.