Signature construction and molecular subtype identification based on cuproptosis-related genes to predict the prognosis and immune activity of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignancies in the world, with high incidence, high malignancy, and low survival rate. Cuproptosis is a novel form of cell death mediated by lipoylated TCA cycle proteins-mediated novel cell death pathway and is highly associated with mitochondrial metabolism. However, the relationship between the expression level of cuproptosis-related genes (CRGs) and the prognosis of HCC is still unclear.

Methods: Combining the HCC transcriptomic data from The Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases, we identified the differentially expressed cuproptosis-related genes (DECRGs) and obtained the prognosis-related DECRGs through univariate regression analysis.LASSO and multivariate COX regression analyses of these DECRGs yielded four genes that were used to construct the signature. Next, we use ROC curves to evaluate the performance of signatures. The tumor microenvironment, immune infiltration, tumor mutation load, half-maximum suppression concentration, and immunotherapy effects were also compared between the low-risk and high-risk groups. Finally, we analyzed the expression level, prognosis, and immune infiltration correlation on the four genes that constructed the model.

Results: Four DECRGs s were used to construct the signature. The ROC curves indicated that signature can better assess the prognosis of HCC patients. Patients were grouped according to the signature risk score. Patients in the low-risk group had a significantly longer survival time than those in the high-risk group. Furthermore, the tumor mutation burden (TMB) values were associated with the risk score and the higher-risk group had a higher proportion of TP53 mutations than the low-risk group.ESTIMATE analysis showed significant differences in stromal scores between the two groups.N6-methyladenosine (m6A) and multiple immune checkpoints were expressed at higher levels in the high-risk group. Then, we found that signature score correlated with chemotherapeutic drug sensitivity and immunotherapy efficacy in HCC patients. Finally, we further confirmed that the four DECRGs genes were associated with the prognosis of HCC through external validation.

Conclusions: We studied from the cuproptosis perspective and developed a new prognostic feature to predict the prognosis of HCC patients. This signature with good performance will help physicians to evaluate the overall prognosis of patients and may provide new ideas for clinical decision-making and treatment strategies.

Keywords: cuproptosis; hepatocellular carcinoma; immune infiltration; immune microenvironment; prognostic signature.