Salivary HOTAIR and PVT1 as novel biomarkers for early pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Sensitive and non-invasive biomarkers for pancreatic cancer (PC) are lacking. We aimed to identify salivary long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) as biomarkers in diagnosis of resectable PC. Five well-documented lncRNAs: H19, HOTAIR, HOTTIP, MALAT1, PVT1, which are most closely associated with pancreatic cancer from previous studies were selected as putative lncRNA biomarkers. Their expression in pancreatic tissues and saliva of cancer patients and healthy controls was measured by quantification polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Compared with benign pancreatic tumour (BPT) and normal pancreatic tissues (NPT), HOTAIR, HOTTIP and PVT1 were significantly up-regulated in pancreatic cancer tissues (PCT). As compared to BPT or healthy groups, the salivary levels of HOTAIR and PVT1 were significantly higher in PC group. They were significantly reduced after the curative pancreatectomy. Both salivary lncRNAs distinguished PC patients from healthy controls and BPT patients with sensitivities and specificities ranging from 60–97%. The expression of salivary HOTAIR and PVT1 did not differ significantly between healthy controls and any one of eight leading cancers worldwide. Collectively, our findings indicate that salivary HOTAIR and PVT1 show potential as novel non-invasive biomarkers for detecting PC.

Mining Exosomal Genes for Pancreatic Cancer Targets

“…One of the lncRNAs, HOX Transcript Antisense RNA (HOTAIR) has been shown to be strongly up-regulated in the saliva of pancreatic cancer patients (67). The H19, imprinted maternally expressed transcript (H19) is involved in promotion of pancreatic cancer metastasis CANCER GENOMICS & PROTEOMICS 14: 161-172 (2017) 168 The lead known protein-coding genes are shown.…”

Long non‐coding RNA PVT1: Emerging biomarker in digestive system cancer

“…When both salivary HOTAIR and PVT1 were combined for the diagnosis of PC, Xie et al found that their combination had good sensitivity and specificity. This result implies that salivary HOTAIR and PVT1 could be a novel non‐invasive and specific biomarker for the detection of PC.…”

Upregulation of long noncoding RNA zinc finger antisense 1 enhances epithelial–mesenchymal transition in vitro and predicts poor prognosis in glioma

“…7 Among them, lncRNAs have acquired extensive attention, recently, as new regulators in many biological processes, such as transcriptional regulation, 8 differentiation, 9 immune response, 10 metabolism, 11 cell growth, and especially tumorigenesis. 12,13 Moreover, since an increasing number of reports have indicated that their abnormal expression is frequently observed in human cancers, some lncRNAs have been validated as biomarkers for diagnostic, metastasis, recurrence, and poor prognosis, [14][15][16][17] such as MALAT-1 for lung, glioma, gastric, and prostate cancer; [18][19][20][21] HOTAIR for breast, ovarian, pancreatic, and colorectal cancer; [22][23][24][25] and CCAT2 for oral squamous cell carcinoma and bladder cancer. 26,27 Zinc finger antisense 1 (ZFAS1) locus is host to three C/D-box small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), and its transcription initiates from the antisense strand near the 5′ end of the protein-coding gene Znfx1.…”