Prognostic Value of a Ferroptosis-Related Gene Signature in Patients With Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background: Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent programmed cell death (PCD) form that plays a crucial role in tumorigenesis and might affect the antitumor effect of radiotherapy and immunotherapy. This study aimed to investigate distinct ferroptosis-related genes, their prognostic value and their relationship with immunotherapy in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).

Methods: The differentially expressed ferroptosis-related genes in HNSCC were filtered based on multiple public databases. To avoid overfitting and improve clinical practicability, univariable, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and multivariable Cox algorithms were performed to construct a prognostic risk model. Moreover, a nomogram was constructed to forecast individual prognosis. The differences in tumor mutational burden (TMB), immune infiltration and immune checkpoint genes in HNSCC patients with different prognoses were investigated. The correlation between drug sensitivity and the model was firstly analyzed by the Pearson method.

Results: Ten genes related to ferroptosis were screened to construct the prognostic risk model. Kaplan-Meier (K-M) analysis showed that the prognosis of HNSCC patients in the high-risk group was significantly lower than that in the low-risk group (P < 0.001), and the area under the curve (AUC) of the 1-, 3- and 5-year receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve increased year by year (0.665, 0.743, and 0.755). The internal and external validation further verified the accuracy of the model. Then, a nomogram was build based on the reliable model. The C-index of the nomogram was superior to a previous study (0.752 vs. 0.640), and the AUC (0.729 vs. 0.597 at 1 year, 0.828 vs. 0.706 at 3 years and 0.853 vs. 0.645 at 5 years), calibration plot and decision curve analysis (DCA) also shown the satisfactory predictive capacity. Furthermore, the TMB was revealed to be positively correlated with the risk score in HNSCC patients (R = 0.14; P < 0.01). The differences in immune infiltration and immune checkpoint genes were significant (P < 0.05). Pearson analysis showed that the relationship between the model and the sensitivity to antitumor drugs was significant (P < 0.05).

Conclusion: Our findings identified potential novel therapeutic targets, providing further potential improvement in the individualized treatment of patients with HNSCC.