Long non-coding RNAs have been shown to have critical regulatory roles in cancer biology. However, the contributions of lncRNAs to gastric cancer remain largely unknown.,The differential expression of lncRNAs in gastric cancer and paired non-cancerous tissues were identified by microarray and validated using quantitative real-time PCR. Gastric samples from patients with gastric cancer were further analyzed for levels of a specifically downregulated lncRNA (termed as LEIGC).,We found that there were significantly lower levels of LEIGC expression in cancer tissue than in adjacent non-cancerous tissues in human gastric cancers (P < 0.01). Overexpression of LEIGC suppressed tumor growth and cell proliferation, and enhanced the sensitivity of gastric cancer cells to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), whereas knockdown of LEIGC showed the opposite effect. We further demonstrated LEIGC functions by inhibiting the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in gastric cancer.,Our data suggested that LEIGC is a tumor-suppressing lncRNA in gastric cancer, and led us to propose that lncRNAs may play important regulatory roles in cancer development and progression.