The construction and analysis of a ferroptosis-related gene prognostic signature for pancreatic cancer

Ferroptosis is a regulated cell death nexus linking metabolism, redox biology and diseases including cancer. The aim of the present study was to identify a ferroptosis-related gene prognostic signature for pancreatic cancer (PCa) by systematic analysis of transcriptional profiles from Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx). Altogether 14 ferroptosis-relevant genes with potential prognostic values were identified, based on which a risk score formula was constructed. According to the risk scores, we classified the patients into a high- and a low-risk score group. It was verified in Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and ICGC (International Cancer Genome Consortium) datasets. The Kaplan-Meier survival curves demonstrated that patients with lower risk scores had significantly favorable overall survival (OS) (P < 0.0001). The area under the receiver operating curve (ROC) for 12, 18 and 24 months was about 0.8 in all patients. The result of immune status analysis revealed that the signature significantly associated with the immune infiltration and immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) proteins. In addition, we used quantitative real time PCR (q-rtPCR) and Human Protein Atlas (HPA) to validate the expression of the key genes. Collectively, the signature is valuable for survival prediction of PCa patients. As the signature also has relevance with the immune characteristics, it may help improve the efficacy of personalized immunotherapy.