Prognostic value and immune infiltration analyses of cuproptosis-related genes in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

The role of cuproptosis, a newly discovered form of programmed cell death, remains poorly understood in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study was aimed at constructing a novel cuproptosis model for analyzing the clinical features, mutation characteristics and immune profile of HCC associated with cuproptosis-related genes (CRG), and to analyze the prognostic value of CRGs in HCC. We comprehensively evaluated HCC datasets containing clinicopathological information from The Cancer Genome Atlas and GEO, on the basis of 19 CRGs. The prognostic value of the cuproptosis-related risk score was established. Our results revealed two clusters associated with cuproptosis. Cluster B exhibited pronounced isolated innate immune cell infiltration and poor prognosis, and significant differences in prognosis and immune infiltration were observed between the groups with high and low cuproptosis risk. High copper mortality risk scores were associated with an elevated tumor mutational burden (TMB) and poor prognosis. Our findings suggest that evaluating copper-death subtypes provides insights into CRGs. Moreover, the copper mortality risk score model aids in characterizing prognosis and immune infiltration independently of the TMB.

MCM5 is a Novel Therapeutic Target for Glioblastoma

“…7 Conventional single transcriptome or proteomics analyses have limitations in fully capturing the changes in gene expression related to GBM resistance. 24,25 To address this, our study systematically investigated chemotherapy-related gene expression differences in GBM patients by synthesizing transcriptomic and proteomic data from the TCGA and CPTAC databases.…”

“…After stable transfection, exponentially growing GBM cells were seeded into 96-well plates overnight. Then, the medium was changed with different concentrations of TMZ (25,50,100,200, 400, 800 μg/mL), and the sensitivities of GBM cells to TMZ were evaluated by IC50 values using the Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) (Dojindo, Japan). GBM cells after stable transfection were treated with 200 μg/mL TMZ for 48 h, and then apoptotic cells were assessed using the FITC Annexin-V Apoptosis Detection Kit (BD Biosciences, Franklin Lakes, NJ, USA) following the manufacturer's recommendations.…”