ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mol. Biosci.
Sec. Molecular Diagnostics and Therapeutics
This article is part of the Research TopicCancer Biomarkers: Molecular Insights into Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Risk Prediction: Volume IIView all 16 articles
Identifying pyroptosis-related lncRNAs to predict prognosis and immune regulation in hepatocellular carcinoma
Provisionally accepted
- 1Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China, Ministry of Education, Northwest University, Xi’an, China
- 2Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
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Immunotherapy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is often an effective therapeutic treatment and is widely used in clinical, but its effectiveness varies among individuals. We aimed to develop a predictive signature on 8 pyroptosis-related lncRNAs (PRlncRNAs) to forecasting survival in HCC patients and evaluating of immunotherapy. To evaluate the prognostic performance of the risk signature, we performed the following analyses: Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, ROC analysis, and construction of a nomogram. The results showed that individuals within the high-risk cohort exhibited an unfavorable prognosis, with the risk score acted as an independent predictor of prognosis. The PRlncRNAs in the high-risk cohort were significantly gathered in immune-related signaling pathways, their functional activity being reliant on immune cells, inhibitory immune checkpoints and cytokines through Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and ssGSEA. Furthermore, we confirmed that downregulation of LINC00942 (risk factor) expression increased pyroptosis levels and promoted the infiltration of CD3 in HCC, while si-AC009283.1 group (protective factor) has opposite results in vitro. In conclusion, this risk signature of 8 PRlncRNAs was exhibited high reliability in predicting prognosis of HCC patients and assessing immune status, emphasizing its crucial role in guiding immunotherapy and crafting precise treatments for the benefit of patients.
Keywords: hepatocellular carcinoma1, LINC009423, PRlncRNA2, Pyroptosis4, Risk score5
Received: 28 Sep 2025; Accepted: 09 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Zhang, Wang, Meng, Liu, Qu and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jingshi Zhou
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