Study of the Differential Expression of Non-coding RNA, such as PRNCR1, in the Plasma of Breast Cancer Patients

Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women, causing high mortality in the affected patients. The identification of circulating tumor biomarkers in blood could be considered as non-invasive strategy for early diagnosis and prognosis. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of PRNCR1 (prostate cancer associated non-coding RNA 1) gene in the plasma of patients with breast cancer and to evaluate its expression compared to the normal ones. Materials & Methods: This study was carried out on the 32 blood samples from breast cancer patients and 25 ones from healthy women. The RNA was extracted from the plasma of the samples. Subsequently, the presence of RNA of PRNCR1 gene in plasma of patients was quantitatively evaluated by a real-time polymerase chain reaction (Real-Time PCR). Moreover, the expression of PRNCR1 gene was studied in terms of clinico-pathological characteristics of patients. The statistical analysis of data was performed in SPSS software using  t-test. Findings: The results showed that the PRNCR1 gene could be detected in the plasma of cancer patients. The obtained results indicated significantly higher expression in tumor samples, compared to the healthy ones (P0.5). Discussion &Conclusions: The data demonstrated that circulating non-coding PRNCR1 of plasma could be used in the discrimination of breast invasive ductal carcinomas from those of normal people. However, more studies should be conducted to determine the tumorigenic role of lncRNA PRNCR1

Nuclear Pattern of CXCR4 Expression Is Associated with a Better Overall Survival in Patients with Gastric Cancer

Introduction. Previous studies have shown that stromal-derived factor-1 (CXCL12) and its receptor, CXCR4, play a crucial role in metastasis of various tumors. Similarly, it has been cleared that CXCR4 is expressed on the cell surface of gastric cancers. However, nuclear expression of CXCR4 and its clinical importance have not been yet studied. Materials and Methods. Herein, we studied the expression of CXCR4 in gastric samples from patients with gastric adenocarcinoma as well as human gastric carcinoma cell line, AGS, by employing RT-PCR, immunohistochemistry, and flow cytometry techniques. Results. RT-PCR data showed that CXCR4 is highly expressed on AGS cells. This was confirmed by IHC and FACS as CXCR4 was detected on cell membrane, in cytoplasm, and in nucleus of AGS cells. Moreover, we found that both cytoplasmic and nuclear CXCR4 are strongly expressed in primary gastric cancer and the cytoplasmic pattern of CXCR4 tends to be associated with a shorter overall survival than nuclear staining. In conclusion, we present evidence for the first time that both cytoplasmic and nuclear expression of CXCR4 are detectable in gastric cancer tissues. However, the role of both cytoplasmic and nuclear CXCR4 needs to be further elucidated