Long non-coding RNA CASC7 is a promising serum biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma.

Background: At present, a large number of studies have found that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) can be used as biomarkers for diagnosis and monitoring prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The expression of lncRNA cancer susceptibility candidate 7 (CASC7) in HCC has rarely been studied. The purpose of this study was to explore the expression of CASC7 and its correlation with clinical features, and to further analyze its diagnostic value in HCC.

Methods: Serum samples were collected from 80 patients with HCC, 80 patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), and 80 healthy people. The expression level of serum CASC7 was detected by droplet digital PCR. Appropriate parametric and nonparametric tests were used for data analysis.

Results: The results showed that the expression of CASC7 in serum of patients with HCC was significantly higher than that of patients with CHB (median: 8.8 versus 2.2 copies/µl, p < 0.001) and healthy controls (median: 8.8 versus 3.8 copies/µl, p < 0.001). High expression of serum CASC7 was significantly correlated with tumor number (p = 0.005), intrahepatic metastasis (IM) (p < 0.001), tumor size (p = 0.007) and tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (p = 0.008). The area under the curve (AUC) of CASC7 to distinguish HCC patients from CHB patients and healthy controls was 0.808 (95% CI: 0.742-0.874) at the cut-off value of 7.24 copies/µl with 63.8% sensitivity and 95.2% specificity.

Conclusions: This study suggested that CASC7 was significantly up-regulated in serum of patients with HCC and closely related to tumor number, IM, tumor size and TNM stage, which may serve as a promising diagnostic biomarker.