Background
Skin cutaneous melanoma (SKCM) is one of the most common cutaneous malignancies, which incidence is increasing. Cuproptosis is a new type of programming cell death recently reported, which may affect the progression of SKCM. Method: The mRNA expression data of melanoma were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus and the Cancer Genome Atlas databases. We constructed a prognostic model according to the cuproptosis-related differential genes in SKCM. Finally, real-time quantitative PCR was performed to verify the expression of cuproptosis-related differential genes in patients with different stages of cutaneous melanoma.
Conclusion
In summary, we suggest that cuproptosis can not only regulate the tumor immune microenvironment but also affect the prognosis of SKCM patients, and may offer a basic theory for SKCM patients survival studies and clinical decision-making with potentially therapeutic drugs.
Results
We detected 767 cuproptosis-related differential genes based on 19 cuproptosis-related genes, and screened out 7 differential genes to construct a prognostic model, which including three high-risk differential genes (SNAI2, RAP1GAP, BCHE), and four low-risk differential genes (JSRP1, HAPLN3, HHEX, ERAP2). Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that SKCM patients with low-risk differential genes signals had better prognosis. The Encyclopedia of Genomes results manifested that cuproptosis-related differential genes are not only involved in T cell receptor signaling channel, natural killer cell mediated cytotoxicity, but also chemokine signaling pathway and B cell receptor signaling pathway. In our risk scoring model, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) values of the three-time nodes are 0.669 (1-year), 0.669 (3-year) and 0.685 (5-year), respectively. Moreover, the tumor burden mutational and immunology function, cell stemness characteristics and drug sensitivity have significant differences between low-risk group and high-risk group. The mRNA level of SNAI2, RAP1GAP and BCHE in stage Ⅲ+Ⅳ SKCM patients was significantly higher than that in stage Ⅰ+Ⅱ patients, while the level of JSRP1, HAPLN3, HHEX and ERAP2 in stage Ⅰ+Ⅱ SKCM patients was more remarkable higher than that in stage Ⅲ+Ⅳ SKCM patients.