A pan-cancer analysis to predict the prognosis and immunological role of copper death-related gene DLAT

As the 2nd-leading cause of death, cancer poses a serious danger to human life and health. The pathogenesis and progression of various cancer types are exceedingly intricate. Attention has been drawn to cuproptosis, a recently identified cell death mechanism. Dihydrolipoamide S-acetyltransferase (DLAT), functioning as a target during copper-induced cell death, assumes a crucial role. Hence, investigating the impact of the DLAT gene on the occurrence and development of diverse cancers becomes highly imperative. Employing a pan-cancer analysis approach, we conducted a comprehensive examination of DLAT expression and prognosis across 33 cancers. To accomplish this, we accessed datasets from the University of California Santa Cruz xene database, CellMiner database, and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis official website. The gene expression data and survival data of 10991 samples were analyzed. By utilizing Gene Set Enrichment Analysis, we explored potential pathways involving DLAT. Additionally, the relationship between DLAT expression and the tumor microenvironment, immune infiltration, tumor mutational burden, microsatellite instability, co-expression of immune marker genes, and the sensitivity of common chemotherapy drugs in the 33 cancers was also examined using the Spearman correlation test. In the majority of cancers, the DLAT gene has differential expression that is statistically significant, and this variation in expression is associated with varied prognoses for survival. We observed that DLAT was related with an unfavorable prognosis in pancreatic adenocarcinoma, liver hepatocellular carcinoma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and uveal melanoma, whereas it exhibited a favorable survival trend in colon adenocarcinoma, kidney renal clear cell carcinoma, and rectal adenocarcinoma. Notably, in these tumors, immune-related analyses revealed significant correlations between DLAT and immune markers, such as immune infiltration, tumor mutational burden, and microsatellite instability. Considering the prognostic implications of DLAT in tumors and its correlations with immune indicators, it is plausible to regard DLAT as both a prognosis feature for certain malignancies and an evaluative metric for immunotherapy efficacy. The findings suggest that DLAT could be a potential therapeutic target and serve as a biomarker for predicting patient outcomes and guiding treatment strategies in various cancers, with its prognostic and immunological implications likely to be context-dependent across different tumor types.