Cross-talk between cuproptosis and ferroptosis regulators defines the tumor microenvironment for the prediction of prognosis and therapies in lung adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Cuproptosis, a newly identified form of programmed cell death, plays vital roles in tumorigenesis. However, the interconnectivity of cuproptosis and ferroptosis is poorly understood. In our study, we explored genomic alterations in 1162 lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) cohort to comprehensively evaluate the cuproptosis regulators. We systematically performed a pancancer genomic analysis by depicting the molecular correlations between the cuproptosis and ferroptosis regulators in 33 cancer types, indicating cross-talk between cuproptosis and ferroptosis regulators at the multiomic level. We successfully identified three distinct clusters based on cuproptosis and ferroptosis regulators, termed CuFeclusters, as well as the three distinct cuproptosis/ferroptosis gene subsets. The tumor microenvironment cell-infiltrating characteristics of three CuFeclusters were highly consistent with the three immune phenotypes of tumors. Furthermore, a CuFescore was constructed and validated to predict the cuproptosis/ferroptosis pathways in individuals and the response to chemotherapeutic drugs and immunotherapy. The CuFescore was significantly associated with the expression of miRNA and the regulation of post-transcription. Thus, our research established an applied scoring scheme, based on the regulators of cuproptosis/ferroptosis to identify LUAD patients who are candidates for immunotherapy and to predict patient sensitivity to chemotherapeutic drugs.