Systematic Analysis of the Aberrances and Functional Implications of Ferroptosis in Cancer

Ferroptosis is a type of cell death related to cancer; however, the characteristics of ferroptosis in cancers are still uncertain. Based on the data in The Cancer Genome Atlas, we found that most ferroptosis regulator genes (FRGs) were differentially expressed in tumors, somatic copy number alterations (SCNA) and DNA methylation contributed to their aberrant expression. We established the ferroptosis potential index (FPI) to reveal the functional roles of ferroptosis and noticed that the FPI was higher in tumors than in normal tissues in most cancers and was associated with subtypes and clinical features. The FPI was negatively correlated with several metabolic pathways but positively associated with several important metastasis-related pathways and immune-related pathways. High FPI predicted poor prognosis in several tumors, whereas FPI and FRGs impacted drug sensitivity. Our study presents a systematic analysis of ferroptosis and its regulatory genes and highlights the potential of ferroptosis-based cancer therapy. [Display omitted] •The ferroptosis regulator genes were aberrantly expressed in tumor•The ferroptosis potential index (FPI) was established to model ferroptosis level•The FPI was correlated with metabolic, metastatic, and immune pathways•High FPI predicted poor prognosis in many cancer types Genomics; Cancer Systems Biology; Cancer; Transcriptomics