Investigation of Long Non-coding RNA HOX A11-AS Expression in Iranian Patients with Glioblastoma: A Quantitative Study

Glioblastoma is one of the most malignant and common brain tumors, accounting for about half of all gliomas. Glioblastoma is a central nervous system tumor that originates from the glial tissue of the brain. The present study aimed to investigate changes in the expression of long non-coding RNA HOXA11-AS as a possible biomarker in glioma.

For the purposes of the present study, first, the medical records of the patients in Imam Hossein Hospital in Tehran, Iran were reviewed. The ethical considerations were respected as well; accordingly, written informed consent was obtained from the patients and the code of ethics was achieved as well. Finally, the paraffin blocks, including the biopsy of brain tumor tissue of the patients who referred to Imam Hossein Hospital during 2015-17 were collected and their degrees were confirmed by the pathologist. In total, 50 samples of grades 1 and 2 as well as 50 samples of grades 3 and 4 were examined in this research project. The RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis were performed for all the tissue samples donated by the patients. Subsequently, a specific primer and probe were designed and the expression of the HOXA11-AS gene was investigated using real-time polymerase chain reaction technique. The mean age of the subjects was 43.70±16.416 years. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 20) using descriptive and analytical statistics. Moreover, the expression levels of this gene in lower- and higher-grade tumor tissues were compared using the unpaired samples t-test.

Based on the results, the tumor samples with grade three and four underwent a 2.76 fold increase in expression (fold change), compared to tumor samples with grade one and two. This difference was statistically significant.

Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the expression of the HOXA11-AS gene has a significant positive relationship with the degree of disease (P=0.0002).