Evaluation of long non coding RNA ZFAS1 expression in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most common causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with an average overall survival rate of <1 year and ~5% survival of 5 years. Pancreatic cancer is a disease that develops rapidly and have no detectable symptoms in early stages, therefore carries a poor prognosis [1],[2]. The high mortality rate is mostly due to diagnosis of the patients at a stage where metastasis have developed and also easily gained resistance of the disease todifferent therapies [3]. Although several genes and molecular pathways have been found to play important roles in the development andprogression of PC, the underlying mechanisms are not yet completely understood. Thus, new therapeutic targets and sensitive biomarkers are urgently needed [4]. Several studies have also suggested that lncRNAs are directly involved in development and progression of PC.Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) are a novel class of RNA transcripts with more than 200 nucleotides in length that lack any protein-coding potential.