Evaluating the clinical importance of long-non coding RNA MALAT1 expression in breast cancer

Breast cancer is one of the major causes of illness and mortality among women. Long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) have an important role in tumor development and progression. MALAT1 (Metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1) is a lncRNA that deregulates in several cancers, however, its value in the diagnosis of breast cancer is unclear. This study was conducted to investigate the MALAT1 expression levels in breast tumor tissue, its association with tumor clinical features and its diagnostic value as a biomarker in breast cancer. In this study, the expression level of MALAT1 was measured in 31 breast tumor tissues and 31 adjacent normal tissues by real-time polymerase chain reaction. The MALAT1 expression alteration between the tumor and normal tissues and its association with clinical characteristics were analyzed with t-test and one-way ANOVA, respectively. The MALAT1 role as a biomarker was investigated by ROC curve. MALAT1 expression level in tumor tissues than to adjacent normal tissues showed a significant decrement 2.87 times (fold change= 0.348, p<0.001). Also, there was a positive and significant correlation between MALAT1 expression and patient's age and tumor invasive features (p <0.05). The ROC curve results showed that the area under the curve was significant and equal to 0.773. The sensitivity and specificity of MALAT1 as biomarker were 71.43 and 91.67, respectively. The results of this study showed that the MALAT1 has a significant reduction in breast cancer and can act as a biomarker in diagnosing patients from healthy individuals.