Prognostic markers of ferroptosis-related long non-coding RNA in lung adenocarcinomas

Kaimin Mao; Ri Tang; Yali Wu; Zhiyun Zhang; Yuan Gao; Huijing Huang

doi:10.3389/fgene.2023.1118273

Prognostic markers of ferroptosis-related long non-coding RNA in lung adenocarcinomas

Front Genet. 2023 Feb 27:14:1118273. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2023.1118273. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Kaimin Mao¹, Ri Tang¹, Yali Wu², Zhiyun Zhang¹, Yuan Gao¹, Huijing Huang³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Critical Care Medicine, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China.
² Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, NHC Key Laboratory of Pulmonary Diseases, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
³ Department of Rheumatology, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

Ferroptosis is a recently established type of iron-dependent programmed cell death. Growing studies have focused on the function of ferroptosis in cancers, including lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). However, the factors involved in the regulation of ferroptosis-related genes are not fully understood. In this study, we collected data from lung adenocarcinoma datasets of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA-LUAD). The expression profiles of 60 ferroptosis-related genes were screened, and two differentially expressed ferroptosis subtypes were identified. We found the two ferroptosis subtypes can predict clinical outcomes and therapeutic responses in LUAD patients. Furthermore, key long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) were screened by single factor Cox and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) based on which co-expressed with the 60 ferroptosis-related genes. We then established a risk score model which included 13 LUAD ferroptosis-related lncRNAs with a multi-factor Cox regression. The risk score model showed a good performance in evaluating the outcome of LUAD. What's more, we divided TCGA-LUAD tumor samples into two groups with high- and low-risk scores and further explored the differences in clinical characteristics, tumor mutation burden, and tumor immune cell infiltration among different LUAD tumor risk score groups and evaluate the predictive ability of risk score for immunotherapy benefit. Our findings provide good support for immunotherapy in LUAD in the future.

Keywords: ferroptosis; immunotherapy; lncRNA; lung adenocarcinoma; risk scores model.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the “Clinic Plus” Outstanding Project (No.2021ZYA010) from Shanghai Key Laboratory for Nucleic Acid Chemistry and Nanomedicine.