A novel prognostic prediction model of cuprotosis-related genes signature in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Cuprotosis is a recently discovered copper-dependent cell death mechanism that relies on mitochondrial respiration. However, the role of cuprotosis-related genes () in hepatocellular carcinoma () and their prognostic significances remain unknown. Based on the recently published , the LASSO Cox regression analysis was applied to construct a risk model using the gene expression data from the International Cancer Genome Consortium as a training set, followed by validation with datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GSE14520). Functional enrichment analysis of the was performed by single-sample gene set enrichment analysis. Five of the 13 previously published were identified to be associated with prognosis in HCC. Kaplan-Meier analysis suggested that patients with high-risk scores have a shorter overall survival time than patients with low-risk scores. ROC curves indicated that the average was more than 0.7, even at 4 years, and at least 0.5 at 5 years. Moreover, addition of this risk score can significantly improve the efficiency of predicting overall survival compared to using traditional factors alone. Functional analysis demonstrated increased presence of Treg cells in patients with high-risk scores, suggesting a suppressed immune state in these patients. Finally, we point to the possibility that novel immunotherapies such as inhibitors of and may have potential benefits in high-risk patients. We constructed a better prognostic model for liver cancer by using . The risk score established in this study can serve as a potentially valuable tool for predicting clinical outcome of patients with .