Epigenetic silencing of noncoding RNA nc886 provokes oncogenes during esophageal tumorigenesis

nc886 is a 101 nucleotides long non-coding RNA that is also known as a precursor microRNA or a vault RNA. nc886 has been suggested to be a tumor suppressor, mainly inferred by its expression pattern as well as its genomic location at human chromosome 5q31, a locus for a tumor suppressor gene(s). Pre-clinical study In order to understand potential roles of nc886 in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), we performed the knockdown of nc886 in nonmalignant HET-1A cells and ESCC cell lines (TE-1 and TE-8) and identified and analyzed genes whose expression is activated by nc886 knockdown in ESCC.