Establishment of a prognostic signature for hepatocellular carcinoma using disulfidptosis-related lncRNAs

Abstract

Background Disulfidptosis is a recently discovered form of programmed cell death that may be a new direction in tumor treatment. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in the development and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, how disulfidptosis-related lncRNAs (DRLs) are involved in regulating HCC is not yet understood. This study aimed to establish a prognostic signature for DRLs and analyze their clinical value in patients with HCC. Method RNA sequencing, mutation, and clinically relevant data were collected from the Cancer Genome Atlas database (TCGA). Univariate Cox analysis, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) analysis, and multivariate Cox analysis were conducted to evaluate DRLs. On the basis of these analyses, a prognostic signature was developed. Subsequently, we validated the accuracy of this prognostic signature using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, C-index, survival curve, nomogram, and principal component analysis (PCA). Finally, we performed Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), tumor mutation burden (TMB) analysis, immune-related analysis, tumor immune dysfunction and exclusion (TIDE) analysis, and half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) predictions. Results A prognostic signature consisting of MKLN1-AS, TMCC1-AS1, AL603839.2, AC245060.7 and AL049840.3 was developed. This prognostic signature demonstrated reliable predictive capability for estimating the survival time of patients with HCC. We observed notable differences between the high- and low-risk groups in terms of immune cell population, immune function, TIDE, and IC50. Conclusions A new prognostic signature was developed based on the five DRLs to predict the prognosis of patients with HCC, which may be helpful for individualized therapeutic strategies.