BackgroundEmerging evidence has shown that dysregulation function of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) implicated in gastric cancer (GC). However, the role of the differentially expressed lncRNAs in GC has not fully explained.MethodsLncRNA expression profiles were determined by lncRNA microarray in five pairs of normal and GC tissues, further validated in another 75 paired tissues by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Overexpression of lncRNA MT1JP was conducted to assess the effect of MT1JP in vitro and in vivo. The biological functions were demonstrated by luciferase reporter assay, western blotting and rescue experiments.ResultsLncRNA MT1JP was significantly lower in GC tissues than adjacent normal tissues, and higher MT1JP was remarkably related to lymph node metastasis and advance stage. Besides, GC patients with higher MT1JP expression had a well survival. Functionally, overexpression of lncRNA MT1JP inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion and promoted cell apoptosis in vitro, and inhibited tumor growth and metastasis in vivo. Functional analysis showed that lncRNA MT1JP regulated FBXW7 expression by competitively binding to miR-92a-3p. MiR-92a-3p and down-regulated FBXW7 reversed cell phenotypes caused by lncRNA MT1JP by rescue analysis.ConclusionMT1JP, a down-regulated lncRNA in GC, was associated with malignant tumor phenotypes and survival of GC. MT1JP regulated the progression of GC by functioning as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) to competitively bind to miR-92a-3p and regulate FBXW7 expression. Our study provided new insight into the post-transcriptional regulation mechanism of lncRNA MT1JP, and suggested that MT1JP may act as a potential therapeutic target and prognosis biomarker for GC.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12943-018-0829-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

BackgroundExtracellular communication within the tumor microenvironment plays a critical role in tumor progression. Although exosomes can package into long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) to mediate extracellular communication, the role of exosomal lncRNA PTENP1 in bladder cancer (BC) remains unclear.MethodWe detected PTENP1 expression between patients with BC and healthy controls; the expression occurred in tissues and exosomes from plasma. We assessed the diagnostic accuracy by the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) and the area under curve (AUC). Cell phenotypes and animal experiments were performed to determine the effect of exosomal PTENP1.ResultsPTENP1 was significantly reduced in BC tissues and in exosomes from plasma of patients with BC (P < 0.05). We found that PTENP1 was mainly wrapped by exosomes. Exosomal PTENP1 could distinguish patients with BC from healthy controls (AUC = 0.743; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.645–0.840). Normal cells secreted exosomal PTENP1 and transmitted it to BC cells, thus inhibiting the biological malignant behavior of BC cells by increasing cell apoptosis and reducing the ability to invade and migrate (P < 0.05). Exosomal PTENP1 could suppress tumor growth in vivo. Furthermore, exosomal PTENP1 mediated the expression of PTEN by competitively binding to microRNA-17.ConclusionExosomal PTENP1 is a promising novel biomarker that can be used for the clinical detection of BC. Exosomes derived from normal cells transfer PTENP1 to BC cells, which reduce the progression of BC both in vitro and in vivo and suggest that exosomal PTENP1 participates in normal-cell-to-bladder-cell communication during the carcinogenesis of BC.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12943-018-0880-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Long non-coding RNA HOX transcript antisenseRNA (HOTAIR) has been widely identified to participate in tumour pathogenesis, acting as a promoter in colorectal cancer carcinogenesis. However, the association between genetic variants in HOTAIR and cancer risk has not yet been reported. In the present study, we performed a two-stage case-control study to investigate the association between HOTAIR tagSNPs and the risk of colorectal cancer. We found that individuals with rs7958904 CC genotype had a significantly decreased risk of colorectal cancer in both Stage 1 and 2, compared with those carrying GG genotype [odds ratio (OR) = 0.70, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.51-0.97 in Stage 1; OR = 0.58, 95% CI = 0.37-0.91 in Stage 2; OR = 0.67, 95% CI = 0.51-0.87 in combined stage]. The subsequently stratified analyses showed that the protective effect of rs7958904 was more pronounced in several subgroups. In summary, our study showed that genetic variants in HOTAIR were associated with risk of colorectal cancer and rs7958904 may act as a potential biomarker for predicting the risk of colorectal cancer.

Most solid tumors are comprised of multiple clones that express orthogonal antigens, suggesting that novel strategies must be developed in order to adapt chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies to treat heterogeneous solid tumors.

The HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA (HOTAIR), a well-known long noncoding RNA, is involved in pathogenesis and progress of multiple tumors. Its ectopic expression and biological functions have been observed in gastric cancer. In this study, we conducted a two-stage case-control study to evaluate whether genetic variations of HOTAIR were associated with gastric cancer risk. We identified that a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs4759314 was significantly associated with the increased gastric cancer risk with an odds ratio (OR) of 1.39 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.13–1.71, P = 0.002] in the combined sets. Further functional experiments revealed the allele-specific effects on HOTAIR and HOXC11 expressions in gastric cancer tissues, of which HOTAIR and HOXC11 expressions of individuals carrying with AG genotype were much higher than those with AA genotype; similarly, the effects occurred in intronic promoter activities, of which the promoter activity of G allele was more pronounced than that of A allele. Interestingly, we identified a novel potential oncogene HOXC11 in gastric cancer pathogenesis with differential expression in gastric cancer tissues by association analysis with candidate gene strategy. These results suggest that SNP rs4759314 of HOTAIR acts as a potential biomarker for predicting gastric cancer, and the role of HOXC11 in gastric cancer etiology is warranted to further investigation.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), abundant and highly stable in the plasma, have been widely reported. This greatly pursued us to investigate whether plasma miRNAs could be considered as powerful biomarkers for diagnosing bladder cancer (BC). We performed a plasma miRNAs profile with the TaqMan Low Density Array, and a two-phase validation to detect the candidate miRNAs expression by quantitative PCR. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) and the area under curve (AUC) were used to evaluate diagnostic accuracy. A total of eight plasma miRNAs abnormally expressed between BC patients and healthy controls in microarray analysis (i.e., elevated miRNAs for miR-505, miR-363 and miR-663b, and decreased for miR-99a, miR-194, miR-100, miR-497 and miR-1 in BC plasma). In further independent cohorts, miR-497 and miR-663b with significantly differential expression were confirmed. Moreover, the AUC, sensitivity and specificity were raised to 0.711 (95% CI = 0.641-0.780), 69.7% and 69.6%, respectively, when miR-497 and miR-663b were integrated. This is the first study systematically exploring the existence of specific plasma miRNAs as early diagnostic biomarkers for BC in Chinese population; and these findings supported that plasma miR-497 and miR-663b could be promising novel circulating biomarkers in clinical detection of BC.