The pyroptosis-related gene signature predicts prognosis and indicates immune activity in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Background Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains one of the most common malignant tumors with poor survival. Pyroptosis is a kind of programmed cell death that can regulate the proliferation, invasion, and metastasis of tumor cells. However, the expression levels of pyroptosis-related genes (PRGs) in HCC and their relationship with prognosis are still unclear. Methods Our study identified 35 PRGs through bioinformatics analysis that were differentially expressed between tumor samples and nontumor samples. According to these differentially expressed genes, HCC patients could be divided into two groups, cluster 1 and cluster 2. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression method was performed to construct a 10-gene signature that classified HCC patients in the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) database into low-risk and high-risk groups. Results The results showed that the survival rate of HCC patients in the low-risk group was significantly higher than that in the high-risk group (p < 0.001). The validation cohort, the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) cohort, was divided into two risk groups based on the median risk score calculated by the TCGA cohort. The overall survival (OS) of the low-risk group was significantly better than that of the high-risk group (p = 0.007). Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses revealed that the risk score was an independent factor in predicting OS in HCC patients. Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analyses showed that immune-related high-risk groups were rich in genes and had reduced immune status. Conclusions PRGs play a significant role in tumor immunity and have the potential capability to predict the prognosis of HCC patients.

Identification of SMIM1 and SEZ6L2 as Potential Biomarkers for Genes Associated with Intervertebral Disc Degeneration in Pyroptosis

“…This article included 81 genes related to pyroptosis based on previous studies [ 16 – 18 ]. We searched for genes associated with pyroptosis in DEGs by mapping Venn diagrams ( http://bioinformatics.psb.ugent.be/webtools/Venn/ ).…”

The pyroptosis-related gene signature predicts prognosis and reveals characterization of the tumor immune microenvironment in acute myeloid leukemia

“…This situation raised great uncertainties regarding the exact functions of pyroptosis in different kinds of tumors. Furthermore, as a matter of fact, previous studies paid much more attention to the roles of PRGs in solid carcinomas [e.g., hepatocellular carcinoma ( Deng et al, 2022 ), breast cancer ( Xu D. et al, 2021 ), lung adenocarcinoma ( Lin W. et al, 2021 ), and colon adenocarcinoma ( Luo et al, 2021 )] with few studies, however, focusing on non-solid tumor such as AML. Therefore, the present study provided a novel signature featuring six PRGs ( CASP3 , ELANE , GSDMA , PYCARD , VDR , and NOD1 ) that exactly and independently predict OS in AML patients, which will further contribute to driving the progress of individualized prevention and treatment of AML.…”

Pyroptosis related genes signature predicts prognosis and immune infiltration of tumor microenvironment in hepatocellular carcinoma

“…The results of qRT-PCR suggested that BAK1, BAX, CHMP2A, GSDME, IL1A, TP53, TP63, GPX4, PRKACA and SCAF11 were highly expressed in HCC tissues. Some related studies have been on pyroptosis-related gene signatures in HCC, which proved that PRGs played important roles in predicting the prognosis of HCC [6][7][8]. Unlike these studies, we firstly added mutation data analysis of PRGs, and the ICGC-LIRI-JP dataset to verify the validity of the model.…”

“…Pyroptosis, designated as a novel programmed cell death pathway usually caused by activation of inflammasome and caspase, plays an important role in the progress of HCC [4][5][6][7][8]. Pyroptosis pathways include canonical pyroptotic pathways mediated by caspase-1 dependence and non-canonical pyroptotic pathways mediated by caspase-4, − 5, and − 11.…”