Identification of pyroptosis-related signature for cervical cancer predicting prognosis

Cervical cancer (CC) is one of the most common malignancies encountered in gynecology practice. However, there is a paucity of information about specific biomarkers that assist in the diagnosis and prognosis of CC. Pyroptosis is a form of programmed cell death whose different elements are related to the occurrence, invasion, and metastasis of tumors. However, the role of pyroptosis phenomena in the progression of CC has not yet been elucidated. This study focuses on the development of a pyroptosis-associated prognostic signature for CC using integrated bioinformatics to delineate the relationships among the signature, tumor microenvironment, and immune response of the patients. In this respect, we identified a prognostic signature that depends on eight pyroptosis-related genes (PRGs) that designate with better prognostic survival in the low-risk group (P<0.05) and where AUC values were greater than 0.7. A multi-factor Cox regression analysis indicated that such a signature could be used as an independent prognostic factor, and both the DCA and the Nomogram suggested that the proposed prognostic signature had good predictive capabilities. Interestingly, this prognostic signature can be applied to multiple tumors and thus, is versatile from a clinical point of view. In addition, there were significant differences in the tumor microenvironment and immune infiltration status between the high- and low-risk groups (P<0.05). The core gene granzyme B (GZMB) was screened and the CCassociated regulatory axis, GZMB/ miR-378a/TRIM52-AS1, was constructed, which may promote CC progression, and further experimentation is needed to validate these results.