The aberrant expressions of long noncoding RNAs have been reported in numerous cancers, which have facilitated the cancer diagnosis. However, the expression profile of lncRNAs in early stage lung squamous cell carcinoma has not been well discussed. The present study aimed to examine the expression profile of lncRNAs in early stage lung squamous cell carcinoma and identify lncRNA biomarkers for diagnosis. Through high-throughput lncRNA microarray, we screened thousands of aberrantly expressed lncRNAs and mRNAs in early stage lung squamous cell carcinoma tissues compared to their corresponding adjacent nontumorous tissues. Bioinformatics analyses were used to investigate the functions of aberrantly expressed mRNAs and their associated lncRNAs. After that, in order to identify lncRNA biomarkers for early detection, candidate lncRNA biomarkers were selected based on our established filtering pipeline and validated by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction on a total of 63 pairs of tumor samples. Five lncRNAs were finally identified which were able to distinguish early stage tumor and normal samples with high sensitivity (92%) and specificity (83%). These results imply that lncRNAs may be powerful biomarker for early diagnosis.
Keywords: biomarker; diagnosis; early stage lung squamous cell carcinoma; long noncoding RNA; microarray.