Low expression of long noncoding RNA CASC2 indicates a poor prognosis and regulates cell proliferation in non-small cell lung cancer

Recently, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to have important regulatory roles in human cancer biology. The aim of this study was to evaluate the expression and biological role of lncRNA CASC2 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). By bioinformatics analysis, we found that CASC2 was significantly decreased in NSCLC. qRT-PCR was performed to investigate the expression of CASC2 in tumor tissues and corresponding non-tumor NSCLC tissues from 76 patients. The lower expression of CASC2 was remarkably correlated with advanced TNM stage and tumor size. Multivariate analyses found that CASC2 expression served as an independent predictor for overall survival of NSCLC. Moreover, overexpression of CASC2 significantly inhibited NSCLC cell proliferation both in vitro and in vivo. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that CASC2 is involved in the development and progression of NSCLC and shows that CASC2 may be a potential diagnostic and target for new therapies in patients with NSCLC.