Cuproptosis-related lncRNAs as a novel biomarker to predict prognosis and explore biological function in cervical cancer

Abstract

Abstract We aim to investigate a prognostic signature of cuproptosis-related long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and to search for effective individualized clinical treatment strategies. Transcription profiles and clinical follow-up data of CC were retrieved from TCGA database. Three cuproptosis-related lncRNAs closely related to the prognosis of patients with CC were identified and used to construct a prognostic signature via LASSO Cox regression. The predictive performance of the signature was evaluated by K-M analysis and ROC analysis. The expression and biological function of the three lncRNAs in CC were verified by CCK-8, wound healing assay, transwell assay, qRT-PCR and WB blot. The ROC curves confirmed the superior predictive performance of the signature compared with conventional clinicopathological characteristics in CC. Furthermore, HIF-1 signaling pathway and TGF-β signaling pathway differed significantly between the two risk groups according to functional enrichment analysis. Finally, the results showed that CDKN2B-AS1 interference, SGMS1-AS1 and LINC02356 overexpression inhibited the proliferation activity of Hela cells. The invasion of Hela cells was remarkably inhibited, significantly attenuated migration functions and also the expressions of TGF-β, Smad2, Smad3 and Smad4 were decreased. The three cuproptosis-related lncRNAs may help predict CC patients' OS and thus could assist clinicians in making personalized treatment plans for CC patients.