Actin fiber-associated protein 1-antisense RNA 1: a novel oncogenic long noncoding RNA

Actin fiber-associated protein 1-antisense RNA 1(AFAP1-AS1)is a newly discovered cancer-promoting long non-coding RNA(lncRNA). AFAP1-AS1 is mapped to the 4p16.1 region of chromosome 4 and found to be upregulated in many malignancies, including esophageal cancer, pancreatic carcinoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, lung cancer, ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer, biliary tract cancer, gastric cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma, breast cancer, tongue squamous cell carcinoma, retinoblastoma, glioma and osteosarcoma. Overexpression of AFAP1-AS1 was shown to be associated with several clinicopathological features such as tumor size, lymphatic metastasis, distant metastasis, TNM stage and poor prognosis. Additionally, AFAP1-AS1 may promote cell proliferation, migration and invasion, regulate cell cycle progress and inhibit apoptosis through modulating the expression of AFAP1, EMT related genes, metabolic pathway of Rho/Rac and PTEN/p-AKT pathway.