Increased expression of LncRNA GAPLINC is associated with tumor progression and predicts a poor prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma patients

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been investigated to be correlated with the behaviors and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the functional role of lncRNA GAPLINC in HCC has not been elucidated yet. The present study found that the expression of GAPLINC was up-regulated in HCC tissues and cell lines in comparison with tumor adjacent tissues and normal hepatocytes, respectively. Besides, high GAPLINC level was investigated to be correlated with tumor size (P < 0.001), number of tumors (P < 0.001) and TNM stage (P < 0.001) of HCC. Specially, patients with high GAPLINC expression displayed significantly lower overall survival rate and progression-free survival rate. Moreover, both univariate and multivariate COX regression analyses identified high GAPLINC expression as a risk factor of HCC poor prognosis. In addition, GAPLINC was verified to promote the proliferation and metastasis of HCC cells in vitro assays. In conclusion, GAPLINC could promote HCC proliferation and metastasis and it may serve as a potentially prognostic marker and therapeutic target of HCC.