Cuproptosis-Related Risk Score Model Predicts Prognosis and Immune Characteristics of Esophageal Cancer

In cancer, the incidence of ESCA is the eighth and the mortality is the sixth worldwide. Copper is one of race metal elements in human body, which may play an important role in apoptosis in cancer. In recent years, Cuproptosis was proposed and studied as a less explored form of apoptosis. The main apoptotic mechanism is that copper binding to lipidated components, which are producted in the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA) directly, causes protein lipidation and subsequently leads to the lack of Fe-S cluster proteins, triggering proteotoxic stress and eventually apoptosis. Our study explored the role of cuproptosis in ESCA and built a risk model by using TCGA-ESCA date, named cuproptosis-related risk score model (CRRS). This model obtained cuproptosis-related risk scores to assess patient survival and prognosis. We also explored the differential expressed gene function enrichment, immune characteristics, and the tumor mutational load (TMB) between the two risk groups. Besides, we predicted the drug sensitivity of ESCA in the CRRS.