Deciphering the Pyroptosis-Related Prognostic Signature and Immune Cell Infiltration Characteristics of Colon Cancer

Abstract

Background: Colon cancer (CC) remains one of the most common malignancies with a poor prognosis. Pyroptosis, referred to as cellular inflammatory necrosis, is thought to influence tumor development. However, the potential effects of pyroptosis-related regulators (PRRs) on the CC immune microenvironment remain unknown.Methods: In this study, 27 PRRs reported in the previous study were used to cluster the 1,334 CC samples into three pyroptosis-related molecular patterns. Through subtype pattern differential analysis and structure network mining using Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA), 854 signature genes associated with the PRRs were discovered. Further LASSO-penalized Cox regression of these genes established an eight-gene assessment model for predicting prognosis.Results: The CC patients were subtyped based on three distinct pyroptosis-related molecular patterns. These pyroptosis-related patterns were correlated with different clinical outcomes and immune cell infiltration characteristics in the tumor microenvironment. The pyroptosis-related eight-signature model was established and used to assess the prognosis of CC patients with medium-to-high accuracy by employing the risk scores, which was named “PRM-scores.” Greater inflammatory cell infiltration was observed in tumors with low PRM-scores, indicating a potential benefit of immunotherapy in these patients.Conclusions: This study suggests that PRRs have a significant effect on the tumor immune microenvironment and tumor development. Evaluating the pyroptosis-related patterns and related models will promote our understanding of immune cell infiltration characteristics in the tumor microenvironment and provide a theoretical basis for future research targeting pyroptosis in cancer.

A Prognostic Pyroptosis-Related lncRNAs Risk Model Correlates With the Immune Microenvironment in Colon Adenocarcinoma

“…Prior to our study, the association of pyroptosis with colon cancer was similarly explored. Wei et al conducted a comprehensive bioinformatics analysis of the role of pyroptosis in the development of colon cancer ( Wei et al, 2021 ). They clustered colon cancer samples according to pyroptosis-related genes and obtained three pyroptosis-related subtypes.…”

Comprehensive Analysis of Pyroptosis-Related Genes and Tumor Microenvironment Infiltration Characterization in Papillary Renal Cell Carcinoma

“…Pyroptosis has been found to slow the development of tumors in multiple cancers ( Sharma et al, 2019 ; Chen et al, 2020 ; Fenini et al, 2020 ). Pyroptosis can activate the immune system, inhibit tumor cell proliferation by altering the TME, and even kill malignant cells ( Fu and Song, 2021 ; Sun et al, 2021 ; Wei et al, 2021 ). We don’t know how it affects the KIRP microenvironment or immune function just yet.…”

Identification of Necroptosis-Related miRNA Signature as a Potential Predictive Biomarker for Prognosis and Immune Status in Colon Adenocarcinoma

“…A nomogram signature consisting of the clinical factors and the prognostic signature was developed to assess patients' outcomes. Then we randomly selected a ferroptosis-related signature [ 39 ], a pyroptosis-related signature [ 40 ] and an autophagy-related signature [ 41 ] associated with COAD on PubMed. To evaluate the prognostic value of each signature, Harrell's concordance index (C-index) and the restricted mean survival (RMS) curve analysis were performed with the “survcomp” package [ 42 ].…”