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

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. 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. 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 ( < 0.001), but a high-risk score was significantly linked to docetaxel ( < 0.001), implying that signature served as a prospective predictor for chemosensitivity. 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.