High expression of long non-coding RNA LOC730101 correlates with distant metastasis and exhibits a poor prognosis in patients with osteosarcoma

OBJECTIVE: Expression of long non-coding RNA LOC730101 (LOC730101) has been closely linked to the carcinogenesis of osteosarcoma and has been shown to function as a tumor promoter. However, the clinical significance of LOC730101 remains unknown. Our present study aimed to investigate the feasibility of LOC730101 as a novel prognostic biomarker for osteosarcoma. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Quantitative Real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to examine LOC730101 expression in osteosarcoma tissues and adjacent non-cancerous tissues. The correlation between LOC730101 expression and clinicopathological features and the overall survival rate was determined. Cox regression analyses were performed to explore whether LOC730101 was an independent predictor of survival for osteosarcoma patients. RESULTS: We found that LOC730101 was significantly upregulated in human osteosarcoma tissues compared with corresponding adjacent normal tissues (p < 0.01). Elevated LOC730101 expression was correlated with advanced clinical stage (p = 0.001) and distant metastasis (p = 0.005). Furthermore, survival assay revealed that osteosarcoma patients in the high LOC730101 expression group had significantly shorter 5-year overall survival time than those in the low LOC730101 expression group (p = 0.0002). In addition, multivariate analysis showed that LOC730101 maintained an independent prognostic influence on overall survival (p = 0.006). CONCLUSIONS: Our present study, for the first time, revealed that LOC730101 may serve as a poor prognostic indicator in patients with osteosarcoma.