Background: A recent study has demonstrated that the long non-coding RNA VPS9D1-AS1 is highly expressed in colorectal cancer and predicts poor prognosis. However, roles of VPS9D1-AS1 in gastric cancer remained poorly understood.
Objective: The aim of this study is to decipher the expression of VPS9D1-AS1 in gastric cancer (GC) patients, so as to assess whether or not it could be used as a novel biomarker for prognosis in gastric cancer patients.
Methods: The expression of VPS9D1-AS1 was examined in cancer tissues and paired adjacent non-tumorous tissues from 126 gastric cancer patients using qRT-PCR. Correlations between the expression of VPS9D1-AS1 and clinicopathological parameters and patients' survival were analyzed.
Results: VPS9D1-AS1 expression was downregulated in gastric cancer tissues than that in adjacent non-tumorous tissues (P< 0.001). VPS9D1-AS1 expression level was markedly correlated with tumor size and TNM stage in gastric cancer. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed low expression of VPS9D1-AS1 were correlated with poor overall and disease free survival. On multivariate analysis, the hazard ratio of VPS9D1-AS expression was 0.30 (95% CI = 0.13-0.66, P= 0.003) for overall survival.
Conclusions: Overall, our data suggest that downregulated VPS9D1-AS1 may be used as a novel prognosis predictor of gastric cancer.
Keywords: Long non-coding RNA; VPS9D1-AS1; downregulation; gastric cancer.