LINC00342 and gastric cancer: To further confirm the high expression levels of LINC00342 in GC, the expression of LINC00342 in 7 GC cell lines was evaluated by qRT-PCR and the results showed that LINC00342 was significantly upregulated in all 7 GC cell lines (all p < 0.05) and had the highest expression level in AGS cells (Fig. 2a), which was therefore selected for the subsequent experiments.