Gastric cancer is one of the most common gastrointestinal malignant tumors, with an estimated 951600 cases and 713100 deaths being attributed to this cancer in 2012[1]. The regional variations observed regarding stomach cancer are substantial. Eastern Asia had the highest incidence of gastric cancer, with an incidence of 35.4 per 100000[1, 2]. In China, gastric cancer ranks second in the incidence of cancer following lung cancer and ranks third in cancer deaths [3, 4]. Approximately 4104000 gastric cancer cases and 293800 gastric cancer deaths were estimated to occur in China in 2014[4, 5]. Although the prognosis of gastric cancer has improved substantially, the mortality of this cancer is still high, which is partly attributed to the advanced stages of diagnosed cancer and the high proportion of recurrence, including lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, and peritoneal metastasis[6, 7]. Therefore, early detection of patients with aggressive biological characteristics and recurrent cancer undergoing radical surgery becomes significant for improving patients’ survival with gastric cancer.
Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are noncoding RNAs longer than 200 nucleotides. Increasing evidence has pointed towards lncRNAs as regulators of several human diseases, including cancer[8, 9]. Many cancer-related lncRNAs have been reported to play important roles in multiple steps of carcinogenesis, including cell proliferation, cellular signaling, angiogenesis and metastasis[10, 11]. HOX transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR) is reported to be overexpressed in gastric cancer and associated with lymph node metastasis and vessel invasion in gastric cancer by promoting epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT)[12, 13]. As the first imprinted lncRNA to be reported, H19 is upregulated in gastric cancer tissues compared with normal tissues and associated with proliferation, migration and invasion of gastric cancer cells[14, 15]. The upregulated H19 in plasma makes it a potential diagnostic biomarker for gastric cancer[15]. Growth arrest-specific transcript 5 (GAS5) arrests tumor growth by regulating apoptosis and the cell cycle[16]. GAS5 has been reported to be correlated with tumor stage and lymph node metastasis[17]. Maternally expressed gene 3 (MEG3) is a tumor suppressor gene downregulated in gastric cancer. MEG3 has been demonstrated to be associated with deep tumor invasion, metastasis and poor prognosis, which make it a potential prognostic biomarker for gastric cancer[18, 19]. Many lncRNAs, such as long intergenic noncoding RNA00152 and urothelial carcinoma-associated 1, have also been reported to be related to biological processes and the diagnosis and prognosis of gastric cancer.
Copy number variations (CNVs) refer to genomic structural variations with gene amplification, gain, loss and deletion, which have been regarded to play a significant role in carcinogenesis of gastric cancer[20, 21]. Researchers have found numerous CNVs on many cancer-associated genes, such as CTNNB1, MYC and CDKN2A, located on different chromosomes, including 3p22, 4q25, 11p13, 1p36 and 9p21[22, 23]. The PIK3CA gene is frequently amplified in gastric cancer and is involved in multiple steps of tumorigenesis, including cancer cell proliferation and apoptosis[24]. The CNVs of this gene could predict the prognosis of gastric cancer regardless of tumor stage[25, 26]. As a well-known suppressor gene, adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) exhibits frequent deletions in gastric cancer[27, 28]. APC was regarded as a potential prognostic biomarker due to its close relationship with lymph node invasion and metastasis[29]. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) CNVs were also reported to be associated with an increased risk of invasion and metastasis, thereby resulting in worse prognosis[30]. The CNVs of other well-known genes, such as MET, HER-2 and TP53, were also correlated with the prognosis of gastric cancer[31, 32]. As mentioned above, most studies focused on the effects of CNVs on protein-coding genes; however, an increasing number of researchers have found that the expression of lncRNAs and miRNAs were also regulated by CNVs[33, 34]. It was reported that an estimated one-third of aberrant lncRNA expression could be attributed to CNVs[33]. Considering the role of lncRNAs in carcinogenesis, the lncRNAs deregulated by CNVs warrant further study to determine their role in the prognosis of gastric cancer.
Therefore, we mined the CNVs and lncRNAs of gastric cancer from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and identified prognostic biomarkers of lncRNA regulated by CNVs.