Overexpression of the long non-coding RNA, linc-UBC1, is associated with poor prognosis and facilitates cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in colorectal cancer

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) serve comprehensive roles in various diseases, including cancer. lncRNA upregulated in bladder cancer 1 (linc-UBC1) is a notable biomarker of prognosis in certain cancer types; however, its involvement in the progression of colorectal cancer (CRC) remains unknown. The present study aimed to investigate the expression of linc-UBC1 in patients with CRC and to investigate its effect on CRC cells. The expression levels of linc-UBC1 were estimated by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction in clinical CRC specimens and matched adjacent non-tumor mucosa from 96 cases of CRC, as well as in a number of CRC cell lines. In addition, the biological roles of linc-UBC1 were examined using a cell counting kit-8 assay, flow cytometry, and migration and invasion assays following the downregulation of linc-UBC1 by small interfering RNA. The results revealed that linc-UBC1 was significantly overexpressed in CRC tissues and the majority of CRC cell lines compared with the matched non-tumor mucosa and normal intestinal epithelial cells. Furthermore, high expression levels of linc-UBC1 were significantly associated with large tumor size, greater tumor depth, lymph node metastasis, and advanced tumor-node-metastasis stages. Patients with abnormal expression of linc-UBC1 had poorer overall survival times according to Kaplan–Meier analyses. Furthermore, multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that linc-UBC1 was a significant independent prognostic factor. The results also revealed that reducing the expression of linc-UBC1 led to the inhibition of migration, invasion, and proliferation of CRC cells in vitro. Taken together, the results of the present study suggest that overexpression of linc-UBC1 promotes proliferation and metastasis in CRC, and may be considered as a novel diagnostic marker of CRC.