Down-regulation of long non-coding RNA SNRK-AS1 in tumor cells of patients with breast cancer

Introduction & Aim: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and responsible for death in people that affected with this cancer. In general, non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) regulate gene expression transcriptionally and/or post-transcriptionally. Endogenous ncRNAs include miRNAs, piRNAs, and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). LncRNAs are longer than 200 nucleotides. There is some evidence that lncRNAs are involved in the regulation of gene expression although underlying mechanisms are still notfully understood. SNRK-AS1 is an lncRNA. It has not been studied about the relation of SNRK-AS1 to any cancers. In this study, we investigated expression changes of SNRK-AS1 gene in clinical tissue samples of breast cancers for the first time Methods: for this study, clinical samples of breast cancer tissues were collected and SNRK-AS1 expression levels were measured through total RNA isolation, cDNA synthesis and quantitative Real-Time PCR, separately in tumor tissue cells and their normal tissue margins. Data was statistically analyzed. Results: Our data analyses showed that the expression level of SNRK-AS1 gene is down-regulated in tumor cells compared to their normal tissue margins. Conclusion: Generally this is the first report of SNRK-AS1 in a cancer, specifically in breast cancer. According to our results SNRK-AS1 may be potentially considered as a tumor suppressor but its proof requires further investigations