Prognostic value and immunological characteristics of a novel cuproptosis-related long noncoding RNAs risk signature in kidney renal clear cell carcinoma

Background: Cuproptosis has been found as a novel cell death mode significantly associated with mitochondrial metabolism, which may be significantly associated with the occurrence and growth of tumors. LncRNAs take on critical significance in regulating the development of kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC), whereas the correlation between cuproptosis-related LncRNAs (CRLs) and KIRC is not clear at present. Therefore, this study built a prognosis signature based on CRLs, which can achieve accurate prediction of the outcome of KIRC patients. Methods: The TCGA database provided the expression profile information and relevant clinical information of KIRC patients. Univariate Cox, Lasso, and multivariate Cox were employed for building a risk signature based on CRLs. Kaplan-Meier (K-M) survival analysis and time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were employed for the verification and evaluation of the reliability and accuracy of risk signature. Then, qRT-PCR analysis of risk LncRNAs was conducted. Finally, the possible effect of the developed risk signature on the microenvironment for tumor immunization was speculated in accordance with ssGSEA and ESTIMATE algorithms. Results: A prognosis signature composed of APCDD1L-DT, MINCR, AL161782.1, and AC026401.3 was built based on CRLs. As revealed by the results of the K-M survival study, the OS rate and progression-free survival rate of high(risk) KIRC patients were lower than those of low(risk) KIRC patients, and the areas under ROC curves of 1, 3, and 5 years were 0.828, 0.780, and 0.794, separately. The results of the immune analysis showed that there were significant differences in the status of immunization and the microenvironment of tumor between groups at low-risk and at high-risk. The qRT-PCR results showed that the relative expression level of MINCR and APCDD1L-DT were higher in 786-O and 769-P tumor cells than in HK-2 cells, which were normal renal tubular epithelial cells. Conclusion: The developed risk signature takes on critical significance in the prediction of the prognosis of patients with KIRC, and it can bring a novel direction for immunotherapy and clinical drug treatment of KIRC. In addition, 4 identified risk LncRNAs (especially APCDD1L-DT and MINCR) can be novel targets for immunotherapy of KIRC patients.