Association of HOTAIR expression in gastric carcinoma with invasion and distant metastasis

BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer is the second and fourth most common cancer in Iranian men and women, respectively, but it is the first leading cause of cancer deaths in Iran. Most Iranian patients with gastric cancer are diagnosed at an advanced stage of disease when the conventional treatments have no effect on improving the survival. So, early gastric cancer detection is of high priority in order to decrease its high mortality rate in Iran. HOTAIR is a long non-coding RNA which its overexpression has been documented in different types of human cancer and can be considered as a potential cancer biomarker. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinicopathological relevance of the expression of HOTAIR gene in gastric carcinoma. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 60 tumoral and non-tumoral gastric specimens were evaluated for HOTAIR gene expression using quantitative real-time PCR. RESULTS: The expression of HOTAIR was markedly increased in gastric cancer tissues compared with adjacent non-tumoral tissues. We further showed that there was a positive significant correlation between the HOTAIR gene expression, TNM staging, perineural invasion, and distant metastasis, but not with other clinicopathological features of gastric tumors. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that HOTAIR expression is modulated during gastric cancer progression and therefore may participate in molecular processes relevant to malignant transformation and metastasis in gastric carcinoma.