Abstract
Melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer, is on the rise globally. The generally poor prognosis makes melanoma still an enormous public health problem. Ferroptosis is a newly emerging form of iron-dependent regulated cell death, which has been implicated in the development and treatment of several tumors. However, whether there is a connection between ferroptosis-related genes and the prognosis of melanoma patients remains an enigma. In the present study, we identified a ferroptosis-related genes signature to predict the prognosis of melanoma patients by analyzing single-cell RNA-sequencing data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Single-cell trajectory analysis was performed to explore malignant differentiation. CellChat was used to investigate intercellular communications in melanoma. Collectively, a novel four-gene signature (CP, MAP1LC3A, transferrin, and TP53) was constructed for prognosis prediction. COX proportional hazards regression analysis showed that the established ferroptosis-associated risk model was an independent prognostic predictor for melanoma patients (HR = 2.3293; 95%CI 1.1528–4.706) (p < 0.018). Patients with low-risk scores had significantly better overall survival (OS) than those with high-risk scores in The Cancer Genome Atlas, GSE59455, and GSE22153 dataset (p = 0.0015, p = 0.031, p = 0.077). Furthermore, the gene expression level of the four genes were verified in multistrain melanoma cell lines and normal human epidermal melanocytes (NHEM). The protein expression level of the four genes in clinical samples were further verified in the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) databases. Taken together, our study identified the prognostic significance of the ferroptosis-related genes in melanoma and developed a novel four-gene prognostic signature, which may shed light on the prognostic assessment and clinical decision making for melanoma patients.
Highlights
Melanoma is the most aggressive and fatal malignant cutaneous neoplasm which arises from a malignant transformation of melanocytes (Schadendorf et al, 2018; Fisher, 2021; Jenkins and Fisher, 2021)
RNAseq data and clinical information of skin cutaneous melanoma (SKCM) patients were retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, GSE59455 and GSE22153 derived from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)
We analyzed single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data of 19 melanoma patients to resolve the architecture of the tumor microenvironment
Summary
Melanoma is the most aggressive and fatal malignant cutaneous neoplasm which arises from a malignant transformation of melanocytes (Schadendorf et al, 2018; Fisher, 2021; Jenkins and Fisher, 2021). In the past few decades, the incidence of melanoma has risen dramatically worldwide (Leonardi et al, 2018; Mishra et al, 2018). Thought melanoma accounts for one percent of all skin cancers diagnosed, it causes the vast. Identification of Ferroptosis-Related Signatures majority (75%) of deaths associated with skin cancer due to its strong metastasis ability and poor prognosis (Schadendorf et al, 2015; Weiss et al, 2019). The modern treatment landscape for melanoma includes surgery, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or targeted therapy which is used alone or combined therapies depending on the features of the tumor (Lee et al, 2021). There is no doubt that the treatment of melanoma has made unprecedented progress in the past decade (Domingues et al, 2018). It is of great value to investigate novel and effective prognostic signature as new therapeutic strategies with fewer side effects for melanoma, so as to provide precision medical service and obtain better clinical benefit
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