Construction of a Ferroptosis-Related Gene Signature for Predicting Survival and Immune Microenvironment in Melanoma Patients.

Objective: In this research, we studied the genes associated with ferroptosis to develop a prognostic model and find out an association with tumor immune microenvironment in skin cutaneous melanoma (SKCM) patients.

Methods: To find SKCM-related ferroptosis genes, we used Cox regression and LASSO approach on 60 genes related to ferroptosis and SKCM-related RNA-seq. Following that, a ferroptosis-related gene signature was created. Time-dependent ROC curve and Kaplan-Meier analysis were calculated to determine its capability of prediction. Besides, several assessments were used to evaluate overall survival (OS), accompanied by the creation of a nomogram for the clinicopathologic factors and the ferroptosis-related gene signature we established. We also investigated the relationship between ferroptosis-related gene signature with three immune checkpoints and immune cell infiltration.

Results: Our prognostic model included two genes (ALOX5, CHAC1). In both TCGA and GEO cohorts, OS was lower in high-risk category. Using our gene signature, we can reliably predict OS. Additionally, our gene signature can predict immune cell infiltration and SKCM immunotherapy response.

Conclusion: Our gene signature has shown to be a reliable predictor of OS, reflect the immune microenvironment, and predict the effectiveness of immunotherapy for SKCM patients.