A novel disulfidptosis-related lncRNA signature for development and evaluation of hepatocellular carcinoma prognosis

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a common malignant primary tumor, is usually diagnosed in advanced stages. Studies increasingly indicate the involvement of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in HCC development. Disulfidptosis, a recently discovered form of programmed cell death, involves abnormal disulfide accumulation within cells. This study involved the associations between disulfidptosis-related lncRNAs and HCC prognosis. Multivariate Cox regression and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator were jointly employed to develop the risk prediction model. Diagnostic accuracy was assessed with Kaplan-Meier survival and receiver operating characteristics analysis. In addition, we investigated the risk models' relationships with immune function, somatic mutations, and drug sensitivity. We developed a signature based on 3 lncRNAs associated with disulfidptosis. Patients in the high-risk group had poorer overall survival than those in the low-risk group. Time-dependent receiver operating characteristics analysis showed the risk score achieved AUCs of 0.756 (1 year), 0.695 (3 years), and 0.701 (5 years). In addition, we constructed a nomogram that predicting 5-year survival in patients with HCC, which may help clinicians predict prognosis from a new perspective. Furthermore, we observed significant differences in immune function, tumor mutational burden, and drug sensitivity between the high-risk and low-risk groups. The proposed 3-disulfidptosis-related lncRNAs-based signature is a promising biomarker for predicting clinical outcomes of HCC.