title: Serum HOTAIR as a novel diagnostic biomarker for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
abstract: Early diagnosis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is an important issue to improve the prognosis. HOX transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR), a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) expressed from the HOXC locus, has been recently revealed as an oncogenic regulator in ESCC. This study aimed to investigate whether serum HOTAIR is involved in the diagnosis of ESCC.
  
  
  
  In this study, we detected serum HOTAIR expression in 50 patients with ESCC (including 42 tumor resection and 8 without surgery) and 20 healthy volunteers to investigate the role of serum HOTAIR in ESCC using the quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) method.
  
  
  
  Clinical data indicated that serum HOTAIR were correlated with TNM stage. The expression level of serum HOTAIR (0.189 ± 0.010) was significantly higher in ESCC patients compared with that of healthy controls (0.055 ± 0.008, P < 0.01). The ROC curve analysis yielded an area under the ROC curve (AUC) value of 0.793 (95% CI: 0.692 to 0.895, P < 0.01). Also, the serum HOTAIR expression level decreased obviously in postoperative samples (one month after the surgery) compared to preoperative specimens. Moreover, there was a significant correlation between serum HOTAIR expression and the expression of HOTAIR in ESCC tissue according to Pearson correlation analysis.
  
  
  
  Our study, for the first time, demonstrated that serum HOTAIR might serve as a potential biomarker for the diagnosis of ESCC.
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Department of Thoracic surgery, Sun yat-sen memorial hospital, Sun yat-sen University, NO.107 of Yanjiangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510120, China.
authors.forename: Wenjian
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Department of Thoracic surgery, Sun yat-sen memorial hospital, Sun yat-sen University, NO.107 of Yanjiangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510120, China.
authors.forename: Xiaotian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Department of Thoracic surgery, Sun yat-sen memorial hospital, Sun yat-sen University, NO.107 of Yanjiangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510120, China.
authors.forename: Zehua
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Department of Thoracic surgery, Sun yat-sen memorial hospital, Sun yat-sen University, NO.107 of Yanjiangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510120, China.
authors.forename: Xiaofan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Department of Thoracic surgery, Sun yat-sen memorial hospital, Sun yat-sen University, NO.107 of Yanjiangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510120, China.
authors.forename: Xueting
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Department of Thoracic surgery, Sun yat-sen memorial hospital, Sun yat-sen University, NO.107 of Yanjiangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510120, China. b_x_s0714@sina.com.
authors.forename: Duoguang
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Department of Thoracic surgery, Sun yat-sen memorial hospital, Sun yat-sen University, NO.107 of Yanjiangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510120, China. j_c_r0714@sina.com.
authors.forename: Minghui
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D002294:Carcinoma, Squamous Cell / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000235:genetics*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004938:Esophageal Neoplasms / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000235:genetics*; D000077277:Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma; D005260:Female; D015870:Gene Expression; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D060787:Neoplasm Grading; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D062085:RNA, Long Noncoding / Q000097:blood / Q000235:genetics*; D012372:ROC Curve
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; C561566:HOTAIR long untranslated RNA, human; D062085:RNA, Long Noncoding
keywords: Biomarker; Diagnosis; Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma; HOTAIR; Long noncoding RNA