Long non-coding RNA HOTAIR is an independent prognostic marker of metastasis in estrogen receptor positive primary breast cancer

ABSTRACT: Expression of HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA (HOTAIR)—a long intergenic non-coding RNA (lincRNA)—has been examined in a variety of human cancers, and overexpression of HOTAIR is correlated with poor survival among breast, colon, and liver cancer patients. In this retrospective study, we examine HOTAIR expression in 164 primary breast tumors, from patients who do not receive adjuvant treatment, in a design that is paired with respect to the traditional prognostic markers. We show that HOTAIR expression differs between patients with or without a metastatic endpoint, respectively. Survival analysis shows that high HOTAIR expression in primary tumors is significantly associated with worse prognosis independent of prognostic markers. This association is even stronger when looking only at estrogen receptor (ER)-positive tumor samples. In ER-negative tumor samples, it is not possible to detect a prognostic value of HOTAIR expression. These results are successfully validated in an independent dataset with similar associations. Furthermore, we find that high HOTAIR expression is associated with strong positive expression of multiple neighboring HOXC genes of the HOXC locus on chromosome 12q13.13 and have both negative and positive correlation with other genes located on different chromosomes. Independent datasets verify these significant correlations and thus indicate that HOTAIR might regulate additional genes than those previously reported. In conclusion, our findings suggest that HOTAIR expression may serve as an independent biomarker for the prediction of the risk of metastasis in ER-positive breast cancer patients. 164 breast cancer samples

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

SUBMITTER: Sørensen KP 

PROVIDER: S-ECPF-GEOD-48408 | biostudies-other | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other