Case Control Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 28, 2019; 25(48): 6902-6915
Published online Dec 28, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i48.6902
Diagnostic and prognostic value of lncRNA cancer susceptibility candidate 9 in hepatocellular carcinoma
Yong-Lian Zeng, Zhen-Ya Guo, Hui-Zhao Su, Fu-Di Zhong, Ke-Qing Jiang, Guan-Dou Yuan
Yong-Lian Zeng, Zhen-Ya Guo, Hui-Zhao Su, Fu-Di Zhong, Ke-Qing Jiang, Guan-Dou Yuan, Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning 530021, Guangxi, China
Author contributions: Zeng YL and Yuan GD designed the research; Guo ZY, Zhong FD, Jiang KQ and Su HZ performed the research; Zeng YL, Guo ZY and Yuan GD analyzed the data; Zeng YL and Yuan GD wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University Ethics Committee.
Informed consent statement: All patients in our study provided informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Guan-Dou Yuan, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, No. 6, Shuangyong Road, Nanning 530021, Guangxi, China. yuan25958282@163.com
Received: September 29, 2019
Peer-review started: September 29, 2019
First decision: November 10, 2019
Revised: November 27, 2019
Accepted: December 13, 2019
Article in press: December 13, 2019
Published online: December 28, 2019
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common malignant gastrointestinal tumor. There are currently few clinical diagnostic and prognostic markers for HCC. LncRNA cancer susceptibility candidate 9 (CASC9) is a long-chain non-coding RNA discovered in recent years, and previous studies have found that lncRNA CASC9 participates in the occurrence and development of HCC, but its clinical value remains unclear.

AIM

To determine the expression of lncRNA CASC9 in HCC and its diagnostic and prognostic value.

METHODS

Data on CASC9 expression in patients with HCC were collected from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database to analyze the relationship between CASC9 and patient survival. A total of 80 HCC patients treated in The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University from May 2012 to January 2014 were enrolled in the patient group, and 50 healthy subjects were enrolled in the control group during the same period. CASC9 expression in the two groups was determined using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction, and its diagnostic and prognostic value was analyzed based on the CASC9 data and pathological data in these HCC patients. The relationship between CASC9 and patient survival was assessed during the 5-year follow-up period.

RESULTS

Analysis of data from TCGA database revealed that control samples showed significantly lower CASC9 expression than carcinoma tissue samples (P < 0.001); the low CASC9 expression group had a higher survival rate than the high CASC9 expression group (P = 0.011), and the patient group showed significantly increased expression of serum CASC9, with the area under the curve (AUC) of 0.933. CASC9 expression was related to tumor size, combined hepatitis, tumor, node, metastasis (TNM) staging, lymph node metastasis, differentiation and alpha fetoprotein, and the high CASC9 expression group showed lower 1-year, 3-year and 5-year survival rates than the low CASC9 expression group (all aP < 0.05). Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that TNM staging, lymph node metastasis, differentiation, alpha fetoprotein and CASC9 were independent factors affecting the prognosis of patients. Stage I+II patients with lymph node metastasis, low differentiation, and alpha fetoprotein > 200 ng/mL had a poor 5-year survival rate.

CONCLUSION

High CASC9 expression is beneficial in the prognosis of HCC patients. CASC9 is expected to be a potential diagnostic and prognostic indicator of HCC.

Keywords: LncRNA cancer susceptibility candidate 9, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Prognosis, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, Gene Ontology, Competing endogenous RNA

Core tip: Previous studies have found that lncRNA cancer susceptibility candidate 9 (CASC9) can promote the survival of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells through AKT ions, but it is not clear whether lncRNA CASC9 can be used as a clinical indicator of diagnosis and prognosis in patients with HCC. This study confirmed that lncRNA CASC9 can be used as a potential prognostic and diagnostic indicator in patients with HCC and it may be a potential therapeutic target for HCC.