Plasma long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) serve as potential biomarkers for predicting breast cancer

Recent studies have suggested that lncRNAs play important regulatory roles in occurrence and progression of many cancers including breast cancer. However, only a small number of lncRNAs have proved to be related to breast cancer. Moreover, the effect of lncRNAs on breast cancer is yet unclear. We aimed at examining whether the expression level of these lncRNAs in our breast cancer patients could be different to normal people, and whether these lncRNAs could serve as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of breast cancer.

We selected twelve lncRNAs as the research targets, which were previously found to be abnormally expressed in plasma of other cancers. The expression levels of these lncRNAs were measured by Quantitative Real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (qRT-PCR) and compared between breast cancer patients and normal people.

The expression levels of plasma lncRNAs (H19, HOTAIR, and RP11-445H22.4) are found to increase significantly in breast cancer patients. The expression levels of other 9 lncRNAs were no significant changed compared with normal people.

lncRNAs may be related to the occurrence of breast cancer and serve as potential biomarkers for its diagnosis.