Bioinformatics analysis of the functional mechanism of the cuprotosis-related gene CDKN2A in adrenocortical carcinoma
Objective To investigate the action mechanism of cuprotosis-related genes in adreno-cortical carcinoma(ACC)through bioinformatics analysis.Methods We combined data from the TCGA and GTEx databases(adrenocortical carcinoma:77 cases;control:128 cases)to identify target genes(CDKN2A).The differential expression of CDKN2A in different clinical subtypes was assessed using the chi-square test.Survival analysis was conducted using the"survival"package in R to investigate the prog-nostic value of CDKN2A.Gene Ontology(GO)and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes(KEGG)enrichment analyses were performed to explore the functional relevance of CDKN2A.Immunological and drug sensitivity analyses were conducted to study the relationship between the target gene and immune cell infiltration as well as drug sensitivity in ACC.Results CDKN2A was upregulated in ACC compared to the control group(|log2FC|>2,P<0.05).The expression of CDKN2A was associated with clinical staging(x2=12.63,P<0.01)and T stage(x2=14.17,P<0.01)in ACC patients.Survival analysis revealed that ACC patients with high CDKN2A expression had worse prognosis than to those with low expression(hazard ratio 1.818,95%confidence interval:1.295-2.552,P<0.05).Enrichment analysis indicated that CDKN2A was associated with the occurrence and development of tumors.CDKN2A in ACC was closely related to the sensitivity of various anti-tumor drugs and the immune checkpoint IDO1(cor=0.3,P<0.05),and it was positively correlated with the tumor mutation burden in ACC(R=0.49,P<0.01).Conclusion The cuprotosis-related gene CDKN2A is closely related to the prognosis,invasion,immune microenvironment,and drug sensitivity in ACC.