MALAT1

Overview

MALAT1 (Metastasis Associated Lung Adenocarcinoma Transcript 1, also known as NEAT2) is one of the most abundant and ubiquitously expressed long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in human cells. It has been implicated in regulation of gene expression, alternative splicing, and cancer metastasis. In muscle-invasive bladder cancer, MALAT1 expression levels are elevated in specific molecular subtypes and associated with survival.

Alterations observed in the corpus

  • MALAT1 lncRNA expression was high in lncRNA cluster 3 of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (n=408), a better-survival subset of the luminal-papillary mRNA subtype; this cluster was depleted in TP53 mutations, enriched in FGFR3 mutations and fusions, and consisted largely of high-purity, papillary histology, organ-confined cancers PMID:28988769

Cancer types (linked)

  • BLCA (Bladder Urothelial Carcinoma): MALAT1 expression was elevated in lncRNA cluster 3, a prognostically favorable subset of luminal-papillary MIBC; high expression levels co-occurred with NEAT1, NORAD (LINC00657), DANCR, GAS5, and UCA1 upregulation PMID:28988769

Co-occurrence and mutual exclusivity

  • High MALAT1 expression co-occurred with high NEAT1, NORAD, DANCR, GAS5, and UCA1 expression in the lncRNA cluster 3 MIBC subset; low expression of ZNF667-AS1 (MORT) and LINC00152 (associated with lower EMT scores) was also characteristic of this cluster PMID:28988769

Therapeutic relevance

  • No direct targeted therapy for MALAT1 alterations is reported in the corpus; its expression pattern in luminal-papillary MIBC may serve as a biomarker for molecular subtyping.

Open questions

  • Whether MALAT1 elevation in luminal-papillary MIBC is causally related to the better prognosis or merely a marker of luminal differentiation remains unclear.

Sources

This page was processed by crosslinker on 2026-05-15.