Upregulation of Long Non-Coding RNA DRAIC Correlates with Adverse Features of Breast Cancer

DRAIC (also known as LOC145837 and RP11-279F6.1), is a long non-coding RNA associated with several types of cancer including prostate cancer, lung cancer, and breast cancer. Its expression is elevated in tumor tissues compared to adjacent benign tissues in breast cancer patients and is regulated by estrogen treatment in breast cancer cells. In addition, expression analysis of DRAIC in more than 100 cell lines showed that DRAIC expression is high in luminal and basal subtypes compared to claudin low subtype, suggesting a prognostic value of DRAIC expression in breast cancer. In the present study, we analyzed DRAIC expression in 828 invasive breast carcinomas and 105 normal samples of RNA sequencing datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and found that DRAIC expression was correlated with estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) status, and is increased in cancerous tissues. Additionally, higher DRAIC expression was associated with poorer survival of patients, especially in ER positive breast cancer. DRAIC was also investigated in the Oncomine database and we found that DRAIC expression predicted patients’ response to paclitaxel and FEC as well as lapatinib, which are commonly used therapy options for breast cancer. Finally, DRAIC expression in breast cancer was negatively correlated with immune cell infiltration. These results reinforce the importance of DRAIC in breast cancer.