A novel long noncoding RNA LINC01133 is upregulated in lung squamous cell cancer and predicts survival

Lung adenocarcinoma (LAD) and lung squamous cell cancer (LSCC) are two major histological types of non-small cell lung cancer. LSCC differs greatly from LAD in many aspects. Accumulating evidence has shown that long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) plays an important role in the process of carcinogenesis and tumor progression. Expression of lncRNA is highly tissue-specific and could be biomarkers for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. Here, we identified differentially expressed lncRNA between LSCC and LAD by data mining of Affymetrix HG-U133 Plus 2.0 microarray. A set of 1646 differentially expressed lncRNA transcripts were identified. Among these lncRNAs, a novel lncRNA, LINC01133, showed the largest fold change among large intergenic noncoding RNAs. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay confirmed that LINC01133 was upregulated in LSCC (increasing fold 6.4, P < 0.01) but not in the LAD samples. LSCC patients with higher expression level of LINC01133 had shorter survival time (hazard ratio = 2.383; 95 % confidence interval 1.023-5.547, P = 0.044). Wound-healing and transwell assays demonstrated that silence of LINC01133 by small interfering RNA (siRNA) inhibited invasion ability of LSCC cell line. Thus, a set of lncRNA was differentially expressed between LAD and LSCC and could serve as potential biomarkers.