A novel ferroptosis-related 12-gene signature predicts clinical prognosis and reveals immune relevancy in clear cell renal cell carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is still highly aggressive and lethal even with various therapeutic approaches. As the kidney is an iron metabolism-related organ, exploring and assessing the clinical value of ferroptosis, an iron-dependent regulated cell death, is practical and important. METHODS: Prognostic ferroptosis-related differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified from the KIRC cohort in the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) database, from which a prognostic signature was established using Lasso-penalized Cox regression analysis. Each patient in the KIRC cohort and the E-MTAB-1980 cohort (from the ArrayExpress database) was assigned a calculated signature-correlated risk score and categorized to be either in the high- or low-risk group divided by the median risk score in the KIRC cohort. Then, the independent prognostic value of the signature was further assessed by Kaplan-Meier (K-M) survival, time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and Cox regression analyses based on overall survival (OS) in both cohorts. Finally, risk-related DEGs were identified in both cohorts and subjected to enrichment analyses for Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and immune infiltration. RESULTS: Among 60 ferroptosis-related genes, 32 prognostic DEGs were identified, from which we constructed a prognostic 12-gene signature with CARS1, HMGCR, CHAC1, GOT1, CD44, STEAP3, AKR1C1, CBS, DPP4, FANCD2, SLC1A5 and NCOA4. Patients in both cohorts were divided into high- and low-risk groups, which were visually distributed in two sets and had positive-risk-related mortality. The K-M survival and the ROC curves validated that the signature has prognostic value with P < 0.05 and area under the curve > 0.7 in both cohorts, respectively. Multivariate Cox regression further confirmed the risk score as an independent prognostic predictor for OS. Commonly enriched terms in GO and KEGG not only showed a high iron correlation but also, interestingly, immune relevance of 3 immune cells (macrophages, mast cells and regulatory T cells) and 1 immune-related function (antigen processing cell co-stimulation). CONCLUSION: We established a novel 12 ferroptosis-related-gene signature that was proven to be an independent prognostic predictor for OS and inferred to be related to tumour immunity in ccRCC; however, the underlying mechanism is still poorly characterized and needs further exploration. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-021-08559-0.