Abstract: Pyroptosis related to inflammation has an important role for tumor initiation, progression and metastasis. Our studies described pyroptosis at the pan-cancer level through the tumor immune microenvironment, survival, stemness score, and anticancer drug sensitivity. We evaluate the differential expression of pyroptosis related genes using the Wilcox test of normal human tissues from the Genotype-Tissue Expression project (GTEX), and human cancer tissues from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). The R packages were used to identify survival analyses of pyroptosis related genes in 33 TCGA cancer types. The correlation between pyroptosis related genes expression and tumor microenvironment, tumor stem cell score, and anticancer drug sensitivity was determined through the Spearman correlation test and Pearson correlation test. The functional enrichment of pyroptosis related genes was investigated using Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and Gene Ontology (GO) analysis. In 18 TCGA cancer types and adjacent normal tissues, the 27 pyroptosis related genes were naturally different. According to correlation analysis, the association between the expression of 27 pyroptosis related genes and the tumor microenvironment revealed that the higher the expression of pyroptosis related genes, the greater the degree of tumor microenvironment. Anticancer drug sensitivity research revealed a favorable connection between anticancer medications and pyroptosis related genes expression such as ELANE, IL18 and CHMP4A (p < 0.05). We studied the association between the immune microenvironment and pyroptosis. The 27 pyroptosis related genes were significantly different in immune subtypes C1 (wound healing), C3 (inflammatory), C2 (IFN-gamma dominant), C5 (immunological quiet), C4 (lymphocyte deficient), and C6 (TGF-beta dominant), as shown in a pan-cancer immune subtype study (p < 0.05). Our research sheds light on the important function that pyroptosis related genes perform in the tumor immune microenvironment, stemness score, and anticancer treatment sensitivity in various cancers. This research was permitted by the Research Ethics Committee of the Emergency General Hospital (No. K202110).
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