Circular RNA (circRNA) is a type of RNAs which, unlike the better known linear RNA, forms a covalently closed continuous loop. They have emerged recently as a new player in governing fundamental biological processes. However it remains elusive about the correlation of hsa_circ_001988 abundance with colorectal cancer. To investigate the circular RNA expression in colorectal cancer, the targeted hsa_circ_001988 was selected from next generation sequence data base generated in house and then designed divergent primers to amplify hsa_circ_001988 and sequenced it for validation. The expression of hsa_circ_001988 in 31 matched colorectal cancer tissue and normal colon mucosa was analyzed by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). We used ΔCt method and investigated the differences between tumor tissues and normal colon mucosa by paired t-test. One-way analysis of variance was conducted to analyze the relationship between hsa_circ_001988 expression level and clinic pathological factors of patients. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was built by SPSS to evaluate the diagnostic values. The expression of hsa_circ_001988 was significantly correlated with differentiation (P<0.05) and perineural invasion (P<0.05). The area under ROC curve of hsa_circ_001988 was 0.788 (P<0.05). Those results indicate that hsa_circ_001988 may become a novel potential biomarker in the diagnosis of colorectal cancer and a potential novel target for the treatment of colorectal cancer.
Keywords: Circular RNA; biomarker; colorectal cancer; differentiation; hsa_circ_001988.