Deciphering the Pyroptosis-Related Prognostic Signature and Immune Cell Infiltration Characteristics of Colon Cancer

作者：Ran Wei, Shuofeng Li, Guanhua Yu, Xu Guan, Hengchang Liu, Jichuan Quan, Zheng Jiang, Xishan Wang · 发表于：Frontiers in Genetics · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.3389/fgene.2021.755384 · 被引用次数：31 · 研究领域：Inflammasome and immune disorders、Ferroptosis and cancer prognosis、Cancer-related molecular mechanisms research

Background: Colon cancer (CC) remains one of the most common malignancies with a poor prognosis. Pyroptosis, referred to as cellular inflammatory necrosis, is thought to influence tumor development. However, the potential effects of pyroptosis-related regulators (PRRs) on the CC immune microenvironment remain unknown. Methods: In this study, 27 PRRs reported in the previous study were used to cluster the 1,334 CC samples into three pyroptosis-related molecular patterns. Through subtype pattern differential analysis and structure network mining using Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA), 854 signature genes associated with the PRRs were discovered. Further LASSO-penalized Cox regression of these genes established an eight-gene assessment model for predicting prognosis. Results: The CC patients were subtyped based on three distinct pyroptosis-related molecular patterns. These pyroptosis-related patterns were correlated with different clinical outcomes and immune cell infiltration characteristics in the tumor microenvironment. The pyroptosis-related eight-signature model was established and used to assess the prognosis of CC patients with medium-to-high accuracy by employing the risk scores, which was named “PRM-scores.” Greater inflammatory cell infiltration was observed in tumors with low PRM-scores, indicating a potential benefit of immunotherapy in these patients. Conclusions: This study suggests that PRRs have a significant effect on the tumor immune microen...