Overexpression of lincRNA-ROR predicts poor prognosis in patients with gastric cancer

Introduction: lincRNA-ROR has been discovered to be associated with tumor progression in many tumor entities. However, the role of lincRNA-ROR in gastric cancer is still unclear. The aim of this study is to explore the clinicopathological and prognostic implication of lincRNA-ROR in gastric cancer patients. Methods: Expression of lincRNA-ROR expression was detected by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) in 137 pairs of gastric cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues. The correlation between lincRNA-ROR expression and clinicopathological factors was analyzed. Overall survival was evaluated using the Kaplan-Meier method with log-rank test. Multivariate analysis was performed using the Cox proportional hazard model to identify independent prognostic factors. Results: lincRNA-ROR expression was significantly higher in gastric cancer tissues compared with adjacent non-tumor tissues. Moreover, lincRNA-ROR expression level was significantly associated with tumor size, tumor depth, differentiation, lymph node metastasis and TNM stage. In addition, the expression of lincRNA-ROR was remarkably correlated with gastric cancer patients' overall survival. Patients with high lincRNA-ROR expression were presented with shorter overall survival. Multivariate analysis indicated that lincRNA-ROR level was an independent prognostic factor for gastric cancer patients. In conclusion, our results indicate that lincRNA-ROR plays an important role in gastric cancer progression, and might be considered as a potential molecular biomarker for predicting the prognosis of patients.