Correlation Between Expression levels of lncRNA FER1L4 and RB1 in Patients with Colorectal Cancer
Abstract Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers in the world. Studies demonstrated that lncRNA FER1L4 was downregulated in different cancers and its expression was positively correlated with RB1 in a competing endogenous RNAs network. We investigated expression levels of FER1L4 lncRNA and RB1 in patients with colorectal cancer. 50 paired colorectal tumor and non-tumor marginal tissues, as well as 30 paired adenomatous colorectal polyps and matched adjacent normal tissues were obtained from the patients. Total RNA was extracted from the samples and cDNAs were synthesized. Their expression were quantified by qRT-PCR. Correlation between FER1L4 and RB1 expression levels was analyzed by Pearson correlation test. Finally, ROC curve analysis was used to evaluate their biomarker potency. We observed significant downregulation of FER1L4, but upregulation of RB1 in the colorectal tumors compared with non-tumor as well as with the adenomatous colorectal polyp tissues. However, RB1 expression was positively correlated with the FER1L4 expression both in the tumor and polyp samples. ROC curve analysis showed that both FER1L4 and RB1 expression levels could discriminate tumor from non-tumor and tumor from polyp samples. None of clinicopathological characteristics of patients were associated with FER1L4 or RB1 expression levels. Despite downregulation of FER1L4 and upregulation of RB1 in tumors compared with non-tumor tissues, the expression of RB1 was positively correlated with the expression of FER1L4 in the colorectal tumor as well as in the adenomatous colorectal polyp tissues. FER1L4 expression level might be considered as a potential biomarker for colorectal cancer development.