Characterization of chromatin regulators identified prognosis and heterogeneity in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Liver carcinogenesis is a multiprocess that involves complicated interactions between genetics, epigenetics, and transcriptomic alterations. Aberrant chromatin regulator (CR) expressions, which are vital regulatory epigenetics, have been found to be associated with multiple biological processes. Nevertheless, the impression of CRs on tumor microenvironment remodeling and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) prognosis remains obscure. Thus, this study aimed to systematically analyze CR-related patterns and their correlation with genomic features, metabolism, cuproptosis activity, and clinicopathological features of patients with HCC in The Cancer Genome Atlas, International Cancer Genome Consortium-LIRI-JP cohort, and GSE14520 that utilized unsupervised consensus clustering. Three CR-related patterns were recognized, and the CRs phenotype-related gene signature (CRsscore) was developed using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator-Cox regression and multivariate Cox algorithms to represent the individual CR-related pattern. Additionally, the CRsscore was an independent prognostic index that served as a fine predictor for energy metabolism and cuproptosis activity in HCC. Accordingly, describing a wide landscape of CR characteristics may assist us to illustrate the sealed association between epigenetics, energy metabolism, and cuproptosis activity. This study may discern new tumor therapeutic targets and exploit personalized therapy for patients.