Decreased expression of the long non-coding RNA SLC7A11-AS1 predicts poor prognosis and promotes tumor growth in gastric cancer

// Yajun Luo 1, * , Cheng Wang 2, * , Peng Yong 3, * , Pengcheng Ye 1 , Zilin Liu 1 , Zhiming Fu 1 , Fei Lu 1 , Wanping Xiang 1 , Wang Tan 1 and Jiangwei Xiao 1, 4 1 The Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, The Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China 2 The Department of Pediatric Surgery, The Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China 3 The Department of HPB Surgery, Nanchong Central Hospital, The Second Clinical Medical College of North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China 4 The Department of General Surgery, Chengdu First People’s Hospital, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Jiangwei Xiao, email: xiaojiangwei@126.com Keywords: long non-coding RNA, gastric cancer, SLC7A11-AS1, SLC7A11, proliferation Received: December 12, 2016      Accepted: September 30, 2017      Published: November 07, 2017 ABSTRACT Many lncRNA and mRNA sense-antisense transcripts have been systematically identified in malignant cells. However, the molecular mechanisms of most lncRNA-mRNA pairs in gastric cancer remain largely unknown. We found the gastric cancer-associated lncRNA SLC7A11-AS1 and coding transcript mRNA SLC7A11 in human gastric cancer specimens by microarray. SLC7A11-AS1, antisense to SLC7A11, is significantly down-regulated in gastric cancer and could promote tumor growth in vitro and in vivo . The effects of SLC7A11-AS1 depend on the regulation of SLC7A11 via the ASK1-p38 MAPK /JNK signaling pathway. These findings suggest that decreased expression of SLC7A11-AS1 contributes to the progression of gastric cancer and may be a novel diagnostic biomarker and effective therapeutic target in gastric cancer patients.