Transcriptome landscape of long intergenic non-coding RNAs in endometrial cancer

Endometrial cancer is the most common gynecological malignancy in the developed world. It is the fifth most common cancer and accounts for 4.8% of all cancers in women. Long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs), a subclass of long non-coding RNAs, are pervasively transcribed throughout the human genome.

LincRNA expression patterns in endometrial cancer compared to normal healthy tissue are poorly characterised. In this study, the lincRNA transcriptome of endometrial cancers and adjacent normal endometrium from the same patients was sequenced and compared with transcriptomes of other gynaecologic malignancies including ovarian and cervical cancers.

RNA was isolated from malignant and adjacent non-affected endometrial tissue from 6 patients with low grade and stage Type I endometrial cancer. Subsequently, Illumina paired-end RNA sequencing was performed, followed by bioinformatics analysis, to determine differential transcriptome expression patterns.

LINC00958 was upregulated in all three cancers, and four lincRNAs including LINC01480, LINC00645, LINC00891 and LINC00702 demonstrated exquisite specificity for malignant endometrium compared to normal endometrium while also distinguishing endometrial cancer from ovarian and cervical cancers. Furthermore, LINC01480 has features required to express a micropeptide.

The lincRNAs, characterised in this study, represent high priority genes to be tested for functional significance in the pathogenesis and/or progression of endometrial cancer. Furthermore, lincRNAs have potential to be released into the bloodstream and therefore the four lincRNAs identified here may represent biomarkers for early detection of endometrial cancer without biopsy.