Exploring the Potential of Pyroptosis-Related Genes in Predicting Prognosis and Immunological Characteristics of Pancreatic Cancer From the Perspective of Genome and Transcriptome

OBJECTIVE: To probe into the role of pyroptosis-related genes in pancreatic carcinoma. METHODS: Herein, we conducted a comprehensive bioinformatics analysis to evaluate tumor-immune infiltration and tumor mutation burden, the correlations between PRGs, and microsatellite instability and found that 33 PRGS were up- or down-regulated in PC. Then we built the PPI network, which was downloaded from the STRING database. Using TCGA cohort median risk score, PC subjects from the Gene Expression Composite cohort (GEO) data resource were stratified into two risk categories, with the low-PC risk group harboring a higher overall survival (OS) (P = 0.011). We employed the ssGSEA approach to quantify immune cell abundance in separate risk groups separated by risk signature while assessing variations in immune cell invasion. Chemotherapeutic drugs were retrieved from the Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer (GDSC) data resource. RESULTS: Eight prognostic PRG models (CASP4, GSDMC, IL-18, NLRP1, NLRP2, PLCG1, TIRAP, and TNF) were established via LASSO Cox regression to estimate the OS of PC subjects with medium-to-high accuracy. CONCLUSION: Our study is the first to identify a pyroptotic-related prognostic gene feature for PC, providing more options for the prognostic prediction of PC.