Construction of a prognosis model of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma pyroptosis and an analysis of immuno-phenotyping based on bioinformatics.

BACKGROUND

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is currently the sixth most common cancer worldwide, and its prevalence and recurrence rates are gradually increasing. To study the relationship between HNSCC and cell pyroptosis and provide new treatment options for HNSCC, a prognostic model of pyroptosis-related genes (PRGs) was established to predict the prognosis of patients with HNSCC, and an immune correlation analysis was performed.

METHODS

A total of 53 PRGs were selected. We comprehensively analyzed the role of these PRGs in HNSCC through multiple omics data-set integration. We then identified two different molecular subtypes and found that changes in multi-layer PRGs were associated with clinicopathological characteristics, prognosis, and tumor microenvironment cell-infiltration characteristics in patients. Next, prognostic models were generated for nine PRGs; that is, cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen 4 (), V-set and immunoglobulin domain containing 4 (), heparin-binding-epidermal growth factor (), aquaporin-1 (), odium channel epithelial 1 subunit delta (), argininosuccinate synthase 1 (), amily with sequence similarity 83 member (), yclin dependent kinase inhibitor 2A (), and erine protease inhibitor Kazal 6 (). Finally, a risk-score model was constructed, and the Kaplan-Meier method was used to evaluate overall survival. In addition, the immune environment and drug sensitivity were analyzed.

RESULTS

This study showed that pyroptosis is closely related to HNSCC. The scores generated by the risk markers based on the new nine PRGs were identified as independent risk factors for predicting HNSCC. The differentially expressed genes between the low- and high-risk groups were further found to be related to the tumor immune cells and pathways. In addition, the risk score was found to be significantly correlated with chemosensitivity.

CONCLUSIONS

Our comprehensive analysis of PRGs revealed their potential role in the tumor immune microenvironment, clinicopathological characteristics, and prognosis. These findings may improve our understanding of pyroptosis in HNSCC and may provide new ideas for evaluating prognosis and developing more effective immunotherapy strategies.