Disulfidptosis-related signature elucidates the prognostic, immunologic, and therapeutic characteristics in ovarian cancer

Introduction: Ovarian cancer (OC) is the deadliest malignancy in gynecology, but the mechanism of its initiation and progression is poorly elucidated. Disulfidptosis is a novel discovered type of regulatory cell death. This study aimed to develop a novel disulfidptosis-related prognostic signature (DRPS) for OC and explore the effects and potential treatment by disulfidptosis-related risk stratification.

Methods: The disulfidptosis-related genes were first analyzed in bulk RNA-Seq and a prognostic nomogram was developed and validated by LASSO algorithm and multivariate cox regression. Then we systematically assessed the clinicopathological and mutational characteristics, pathway enrichment analysis, immune cell infiltration, single-cell-level expression, and drug sensitivity according to DRPS.

Results: The DRPS was established with 6 genes (MYL6, PDLIM1, ACTN4, FLNB, SLC7A11, and CD2AP) and the corresponding prognostic nomogram was constructed based on the DRPS, FIGO stage, grade, and residual disease. Stratified by the risk score derived from DRPS, patients in high-risk group tended to have worse prognosis, lower level of disulfidptosis, activated oncogenic pathways, inhibitory tumor immune microenvironment, and higher sensitivity to specific drugs including epirubicin, stauroporine, navitoclax, and tamoxifen. Single-cell transcriptomic analysis revealed the expression level of genes in the DRPS significantly varied in different cell types between tumor and normal tissues. The protein-level expression of genes in the DRPS was validated by the immunohistochemical staining analysis.

Conclusion: In this study, the DRPS and corresponding prognostic nomogram for OC were developed, which was important for OC prognostic assessment, tumor microenvironment modification, drug sensitivity prediction, and exploration of potential mechanisms in tumor development.