linc-ror and its spliced variants 2 and 4 are significantly up-regulated in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

objective(s): similar characteristics of molecular pathways between cellular reprogramming events and tumorigenesis have been accentuated in recent years. reprogramming-related transcription factors, also known as yamanaka factors (oct4, sox2, klf4, and c-myc), are also well-known oncogenes promoting cancer initiation, progression, and cellular transformation into cancer stem cells. long non-coding rnas (lncrnas) are a major class of rna molecules with emerging roles in stem cell pluripotency, cellular reprogramming, cellular transformation, and tumorigenesis. the long intergenic non-coding rna ror (lincrna-ror, linc-ror) acts as a regulator of cellular reprograming through sponging mir-145 that normally negatively regulates the expression of the stemness factors nanog, oct4, and sox2. materials and methods: here, we employed a real-time pcr approach to determine the expression patterns of linc-ror and its two novel spliced variants (variants 2 and 4) in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (escc). results: the quantitative real-time rt-pcr results revealed a significant up-regulation of linc-ror (p=0.0098) and its variants 2 (p=0.0250) and 4 (p=0.0002) in tumor samples of escc, compared to their matched non-tumor tissues obtained from the margin of same tumors. our data also demonstrated a significant up-regulation of variant 4 in high-grade tumor samples, in comparison to the low-grade ones (p=0.04). moreover, the roc curve analysis demonstrated that the variant 4 of ror has a potential to discriminate between tumor and non-tumor samples (auc=0.66, p<0.05). conclusion: our data suggest a significant up-regulation of linc-ror and its variants 2 and 4 in escc tissue samples.