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. 2025 Jul 25;18(1):326.
doi: 10.1186/s13104-025-07401-1.

Upregulation of PCAT1, PCAT2, and PCAT3 LncRNAs in cervical cancer patients and their diagnostic value

Hadi Bazmi #  1 , Asma Alizadeh Asghari #  1 , Mahya Barzgar Jalali #  1 , Leila Rezvan  2 , Fateme Panahi Zang Malek  3 , Reza Safaralizadeh  4
Affiliations

Upregulation of PCAT1, PCAT2, and PCAT3 LncRNAs in cervical cancer patients and their diagnostic value

Hadi Bazmi et al. BMC Res Notes. .

Abstract

Objective: Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers among women. Despite advances in vaccination and screening, barriers to early detection and effective treatment remain. lncRNAs play an important role in cancer progression and therapeutic responses. New lncRNAs such as PCAT1, PCAT2, and PCAT3 have shown oncogenic activities in multiple cancers, but their role in cervical cancer is not understood. This study investigated the expression patterns of PCAT1, PCAT2, and PCAT3 in cervical cancer to evaluate their use as diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets.

Results: The expression level of PCAT1, PCAT2, and PCAT3 was significantly (P value < 0.05) higher in tumor tissues.ROC analysis showed a moderate diagnostic biomarker value for PCAT1 (AUC 0.79, sensitivity 79%, specificity 69%). Spearman's analysis showed a positive correlation between PCAT1-PCAT2 and PCAT1-PCAT3. PCAT1, PCAT2, and PCAT3 lncRNAs significantly increase in cervical cancerous tissues and may play a role as novel oncogenes. Their use as clinical diagnostic markers requires further studies.

Keywords: Biomarker; Cervical cancer (CC); Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs); PCAT1; PCAT2; PCAT3.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Consent for publication: Not Applicable. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Tabriz with the code IR.TABRIZU.REC.1398.015. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. All research stages followed the Ethics Committee standards and the Declaration of Helsinki.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Differential expression levels of PCAT1, PCAT2, and PCAT3 in cervical cancer tissues compared to adjacent marginal tissues. (A) The expression levels of PCAT1, (B) PCAT2, and (C) PCAT3 were significantly higher in tumoral tissues than in matched marginal tissues. Expression was normalized to β-actin. Statistical significance was determined using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test (P < 0.0001). Each plot includes box plots, dot plots, and violin plots to show distribution and variability
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
ROC curves for evaluating the diagnostic performance of PCAT1, PCAT2, and PCAT3. PCAT1 demonstrated the highest diagnostic accuracy with an AUC of 0.79 (95% CI: 0.73–0.85), followed by PCAT3 (AUC = 0.72; 95% CI: 0.65–0.79) and PCAT2 (AUC = 0.71; 95% CI: 0.64–0.78). These results suggest moderate diagnostic utility, particularly for PCAT1, as a potential biomarker in cervical cancer detection. In addition, the combined multivariate ROC model incorporating all three lncRNAs yielded a higher diagnostic accuracy with an AUC of 0.81 (95% CI: 0.75–0.87), sensitivity of 80%, and specificity of 71%
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Correlation Heatmap of PCAT lncRNAs in Cervical Cancer. This heatmap visualizes the pairwise correlation between the expression levels of PCAT1, PCAT2, and PCAT3 in cervical cancer tissues. Spearman correlation analysis indicates moderate but statistically significant positive relationships between PCAT1-PCAT2 (r = 0.228, P = 0.022) and PCAT1-PCAT3 (r = 0.198, P = 0.048). In contrast, the correlation between PCAT2 and PCAT3 was negligible and not statistically significant (r = 0.008, P = 0.934)
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