RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Comprehensive characterisation of compartment-specific long non-coding RNAs associated with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma JF Gut JO Gut FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Society of Gastroenterology SP 499 OP 511 DO 10.1136/gutjnl-2017-314353 VO 68 IS 3 A1 Arnes, Luis A1 Liu, Zhaoqi A1 Wang, Jiguang A1 Maurer, Carlo A1 Sagalovskiy, Irina A1 Sanchez-Martin, Marta A1 Bommakanti, Nikhil A1 Garofalo, Diana C A1 Balderes, Dina A A1 Sussel, Lori A1 Olive, Kenneth P A1 Rabadan, Raul YR 2019 UL http://gut.bmj.com/content/68/3/499.abstract AB Objective Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is a highly metastatic disease with limited therapeutic options. Genome and transcriptome analyses have identified signalling pathways and cancer driver genes with implications in patient stratification and targeted therapy. However, these analyses were performed in bulk samples and focused on coding genes, which represent a small fraction of the genome.Design We developed a computational framework to reconstruct the non-coding transcriptome from cross-sectional RNA-Seq, integrating somatic copy number alterations (SCNA), common germline variants associated to PDA risk and clinical outcome. We validated the results in an independent cohort of paired epithelial and stromal RNA-Seq derived from laser capture microdissected human pancreatic tumours, allowing us to annotate the compartment specificity of their expression. We employed systems and experimental biology approaches to interrogate the function of epithelial long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) associated with genetic traits and clinical outcome in PDA.Results We generated a catalogue of PDA-associated lncRNAs. We showed that lncRNAs define molecular subtypes with biological and clinical significance. We identified lncRNAs in genomic regions with SCNA and single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with lifetime risk of PDA and associated with clinical outcome using genomic and clinical data in PDA. Systems biology and experimental functional analysis of two epithelial lncRNAs (LINC00673 and FAM83H-AS1) suggest they regulate the transcriptional profile of pancreatic tumour samples and PDA cell lines.Conclusions Our findings indicate that lncRNAs are associated with genetic marks of pancreatic cancer risk, contribute to the transcriptional regulation of neoplastic cells and provide an important resource to design functional studies of lncRNAs in PDA.