Appraisal of diagnostic ability of UCA1 as a biomarker of carcinoma of the urinary bladder

Abstract

Initial diagnosis of carcinoma of the urinary bladder remains to be a challenge. Urine cytology, as an adjunct to cystoscopy, is less sensitive for low-grade tumors. Urothelial cancer associated 1 (UCA1) is a novel non-coding RNA gene, which plays a pivotal role in bladder cancer progression. Our aim is to investigate the significance of urinary UCA1 for the non-invasive diagnosis of transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the urinary bladder. We examined UCA1 expression in a bladder cancer cell line (T24) and in urine of 28 healthy individuals, 46 patients of non-malignant disorders, and 117 cases (69 primary and 48 recurrent cases) of histologically proven TCC prior to transurethral resection by using real-time PCR and compared it with voided urinary cytology. UCA1 expression was found in T24 cell line and also found to be significantly higher in the cancer group as compared to the controls (p<0.001). UCA1 messenger RNA (mRNA) expression showed a significant (p<0.05) association with stage and grade (p<0.05). UCA1 showed a sensitivity of 79.49% and a specificity of 79.73% (p<0.001), whereas urine cytology had a sensitivity of 66.67% and a specificity of 95.95% for TCC cases. Higher expression of UCA1 was associated with high grade (G2-G3, sensitivity=84.09%) (p<0.001). UCA1 mRNA expression did not significantly correlate with the patient's age, sex, and smoking habit (p>0.05). UCA1 can be used as a non-invasive diagnostic biomarker for TCC bladder as an adjunct to cytology in the early diagnosis of primary urinary bladder cancer.

HULC and Linc00152 Act as Novel Biomarkers in Predicting Diagnosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

“…For the purpose of indentifying plasma lncRNAs as potential biomarkers, we searched candidate databases of lncRNAdb, LNCipedia, and LncRNA Disease. Previous studies showed that UCA1, TUG1, CCAT1 and Linc00152 were up-regulated obviously in tumor tissues compared with nontumor tissues [16][17][18][19], while MEG3 was down-regulated significantly in tumor tissues. Regulations of all these lncRNAs in HCC have not been clarified yet.…”

“…Some previous studies have shown that many lncRNAs were upregulated or down-regulated dramatically in tumor tissues in contrast to non-tumor tissues [16][17][18][19][20]. However, the regulation of these lncRNAs in HCC remains largely unknown.…”

“…LncRNAs have been reported as biomarkers for the diagnosis of multiple diseases [11,12], including cancers, such as cancers of colorectum, prostate and bladder [13][14][15]. Some previous studies showed that many lncRNAs were up-regulated or down-regulated significantly in tumor tissues compared with non-tumor tissues [16][17][18][19][20]. However, the aberrant expression of these lncRNAs in HCC has not been clarified yet.…”

Integrative functional genetic-epigenetic approach for selecting genes as urine biomarkers for bladder cancer diagnosis

“…In our study, we used the Hyaluronoglucosaminidase 1 gene as a starting point to generate a list of regulatory genes, in a ranking order of highest prediction, using relevant data bases. In addition, we selected lncRNA and miRNAs which were previously published in BC [9][10][11] and were reported to target HYAL1. Then, we performed pathway enrichment analysis and multiple sequence alignment to explore the intersected signaling pathways and their evolutionary relationship.…”

“…In previous studies, associations between BC and several biomarkers such as lncRNA-UCA1 [9], miR-210 [10], miR-96 [11], miRNA-220, or Hyaluronoglucosaminidase 1 [12] were identified.…”