GSE208576
A prognostic signature of cell death-related genes for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma
Human papillomavirus (HPV) positive HNSCC patients generally have a favorable survival and promising responsiveness to radiotherapy, chemoradiotherapy and checkpoint blockades. However, HPV negative patients, the majority of HNSCC patients, have been largely overlooked. Cell death has been involved in the therapeutic resistance of cancers. We constructed a cell death index (CDI), based on autophagy, apoptosis and pyroptosis related genes, to predict the prognosis for HNSCC using TCGA dataset, and validated in a cohort from Qilu Hospital of Shandong University. We performed RNA sequencing of 28 paraffin-embedded tissue from HNSCC patients and determined HPV status by immunohistochemistry of p16. We found that CDI was an independent prognostic indicator for overall survival. Notably, the prognostic value of CDI was more profound in HPV negative HNSCC patients compared with those with HPV positivity. Overall design: We constructed a cell death index (CDI), based on autophagy, apoptosis and pyroptosis related genes, to predict the prognosis for HNSCC using TCGA dataset. We performed RNA sequencing of 28 paraffin-embedded tissue from HNSCC patients diagnosed in Qilu Hospital of Shandong University and used this independent dataset for validation. We further analyzed the prognostic value of CDI in HPV positive and HPV negative subgroups.