MALAT1 and neoplasm: In a study evaluating the expression of the lncRNAs H19, HOTAIR and MALAT1 in gastric cancer plasma samples, Arita et al (2013) showed that only H19 is higher expressed in tumor samples than in the controls, and reported significanly decreased expression levels in post-operative tumor samples, indicating that the release of lncRNAs into the plasma can reflect the disease status (129).