Ferroptosis related genes are regulated by methylation and predict the prognosis of glioblastoma patients

Background: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive type of primary brain tumor. Ferroptosis is a form of cell death that is involved in regulating the biological behavior of tumors, and could become a promising potential biomarker in tumor diagnosis and treatment. Methods: We used the expression of ferroptosis related genes in the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Chinese Glioma Cooperative Group (CGCG) datasets to construct a prognostic prediction model and verified the expression by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Using TCGA genomic and epigenetic data, we analyzed the factors that regulate the expression of these ferroptosis related genes. Results: We used 15 ferroptosis related genes related to the prognosis of GBM to establish a prognostic predictive risk model. The area under the curve (AUC) of this model was 0.907, which had good utility in predicting the prognosis of GBM, and could be used as an independent prognostic indicator for GBM patients. We verified the expression of these risk genes by RT-qPCR in 30 independent pairs of tumors and adjacent tissues. Genomic and epigenetic analysis of risk genes found that the expressions of these genes were mainly regulated by methylation, not copy number variation in GBM. Conclusions: The ferroptosis related characteristics proposed in this study can potentially predict the prognosis of GBM patients, and these prognostic-related genes are generally regulated by methylation.