HOTAIRM1 as a potential biomarker for diagnosis of colorectal cancer functions the role in the tumour suppressor

Recent studies have revealed many different long noncoding RNAs (lncRNA), however, the investigation for their function and clinical value as tumour biomarkers has scarcely begun. Here, we found that expression of HOTAIRM1 was reduced in colorectal cancer (CRC) tissues compared with matched normal tissues, and plasma HOTAIRM1 levels in CRC patients were less than in controls. The cut‐off point was chosen as 0.003 with a sensitivity of 64.00% and a specificity of 76.50% in the validation set. The performance of HOTAIRM1 was highly comparable to carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), and better than CA19‐9 and CA125. The combined assay of HOTAIRM1 and CEA raised the sensitivity and specificity to 84.00%. HOTAIRM1 knockdown resulted in obvious changes in expression of the cell proliferation related to genes and promoted cell proliferation. HOTAIRM1 plays a role of tumour suppressor in CRC; Down‐regulation of HOTAIRM1 can serve as a biomarker for CRC, and combined HOTAIRM1 and CEA assay might provide a promising diagnosis for CRC.