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Research Paper|Volume 15, Issue 6|pp 1964—1976

Clinical significance and integrative analysis of the cuproptosis-associated genes in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

Qiu Peng1, Xianjie Jiang1, Shiming Tan1, Xuemeng Xu1, Longzheng Xia1, Nayiyuan Wu1, Jinguan Lin1, Linda Oyang1, Yanyan Tang1, Mingjing Peng1, Min Su1, Xia Luo1, Yaqian Han1, Qianjin Liao1,2, Yujuan Zhou1,2
  • 1Hunan Key Laboratory of Cancer Metabolism, Hunan Cancer Hospital and The Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Changsha 410013, Hunan, China
  • 2Public Service Platform of Tumor Organoids Technology, Changsha 410013, Hunan, China
* Equal contribution
Received: November 16, 2022Accepted: March 1, 2023Published: March 20, 2023

Copyright: © 2023 Peng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC) is a kind of malignant tumor originating from the oropharynx, larynx, nasopharynx and oral cavity. The incidence of HNSC is increasing and it is the sixth malignant tumor in the world at present. “Cuprotosis” is a novel cuper-dependent cell death mode that is closely related to mitochondrial respiration. Tumorigenesis is closely related to the dysregulation of cell death. However, the relationship between cuprotosis and HNSC remains unclear. Here, we investigated the association between 10 cuprotosis-associated genes (CAGs) and HNSC using multi-omics public data. We found that CAGs had abnormal expression and significant genetic changes in HNSC, especially CDKN2A with 54% mutation rate. Expression of CAGs significantly correlates with the prognosis of HNSC patients. Moreover, the CAGs expression is correlated with the immune checkpoints expression and immune cells infiltration. These CAGs expression was associated with multiple drugs sensitivity of cancer cells, such as cisplatin and docetaxel. These findings indicate that CAGs are likely to serve an essential role in the diagnosis, prognosis, immunotherapy and drug therapy prediction of HNSC.