High BANCR expression is associated with worse prognosis in human malignant carcinomas: an updated systematic review...

BRAF-activated noncoding RNA (BANCR) is aberrantly expressed in various tumor tissues and has been confirmed to function as a tumor suppressor or oncogene in many types of cancers. Considering the conflicting results and insufficient sampling, a meta-analysis was performed to explore the prognostic value of BANCR in various carcinomas.

A comprehensive literature search of PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, Cochrane Library and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) was conducted to collect relevant articles.

The pooled results showed a strong relationship between high BANCR expression and poor overall survival (OS) (HR (hazard ratio) =1.60, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.19-2.15, P = 0.002) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) (HR = 1.53, 95% CI: 1.27-1.85, P < 0.00001). In addition, high BANCR expression predicted advanced tumor stage (OR (odds ratio) =2.39, 95% CI: 1.26-4.53, P = 0.008), presence of lymph node metastasis (OR = 2.03, 95% CI: 1.08-3.83, P = 0.03), positive distant metastasis (OR = 3.08, 95% CI: 1.92-4.96, P < 0.00001) and larger tumor sizes (OR = 1.63, 95% CI: 1.09-2.46, P = 0.02). However, no associations were found for smoking status (OR = 1.01, 95% CI: 0.65-1.56, P = 0.98), age (OR = 0.88, 95% CI: 0.71-1.09, P = 0.236) and sex (OR = 0.91, 95% CI: 0.72-1.16, P = 0.469). The sensitivity analysis of OS showed that the results of each publication were almost consistent with the combined results, and the merged results have high robustness and reliability.

The results showed that elevated BANCR expression was associated with unfavorable prognosis for most cancer patients, and BANCR could serve as a promising therapeutic target and independent prognostic predictor in most of cancer types.