Abstract
Esophageal cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality because of poor prognosis. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been gradually demonstrated to play critical roles in cancer development. We identified a novel long noncoding RNA named linc00460 by microarray analysis using esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) clinical samples, which has not been studied before. Our research indicated that linc00460 was overexpressed in the majority of tumor tissues and ESCC cell lines. Linc00460 expression was positively correlated with ESCC TNM stage, lymph node metastasis, and predicted poor prognosis. In vitro experiments showed that linc00460 depletion suppressed ESCC cell growth through regulating cell proliferation and cell cycle; in additional, linc00460 depletion accelerated ESCC cell apoptosis. We further revealed that linc00460 overexpression was manipulated by transcriptional co-activator CBP/P300 through histone acetylation. Given the high expression and important biological functions of linc00460, we suggest that linc00460 works as an oncogene and might be a valuable prognostic biomarker for ESCC diagnosis and treatment.