AUTHOR=Wu Zeng-Hong , Li Zi-Wei , Yang Dong-Liang , Liu Jia 

TITLE=Development and Validation of a Pyroptosis-Related Long Non-coding RNA Signature for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology

VOLUME=9

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cell-and-developmental-biology/articles/10.3389/fcell.2021.713925

DOI=10.3389/fcell.2021.713925

ISSN=2296-634X

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly aggressive malignant disease, and numerous studies have demonstrated that an inflammatory environment can induce normal cells to transform into cancerous.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> We integrated genomic data to comprehensively assess the association between pyroptosis and tumor microenvironment (TME) cell-infiltrating characteristics in HCC, as well as the potential molecular function and clinical significance of lncRNA.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> The analysis of CNV alteration frequency displayed that CNV changes were common in 33 PRGs, and most were focused on copy number amplification. As a result of lasso regression analysis, nine differentially expressed lncRNAs (AL031985.3, NRAV, OSMR-AS1, AC073611.1, MKLN1-AS, AL137186.2, AL049840.4, MIR4435-2HG, and AL118511.1) were selected as independent prognosis factors of HCC patients. Patients at high risk have poorer survival than those in the low-risk group in training and testing cohorts. A low-risk score was significantly associated with an IC50 of chemotherapeutics such as bortezomib (<italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001), but a high-risk score was significantly linked to docetaxel (<italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001), implying that signature served as a prospective predictor for chemosensitivity.</p><p><bold>Conclusion:</bold> This work suggests pyroptosis-related lncRNAs features and their potential mechanisms on tumor microenvironment. The exploration may assist in identifying novel biomarkers and assist patients in predicting their prognosis, clinical diagnosis, and management.</p>