CDKN2A-mediated molecular subtypes characterize the hallmarks of tumor microenvironment and guide precision medicine in triple-negative breast cancer.

ABSTRACT

Currently, breast cancer (BRCA) has become the most common cancer in the world, whose pathological mechanism is complex. Among its subtypes, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has the worst prognosis. With the increasing number of diagnosed TNBC patients, the urgent need of novel biomarkers is also rising. Cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A (CDKN2A) has recently emerged as a key regulator associated with ferroptosis and cuproptosis (FAC) and has exhibited a significant effect on BRCA, but its detailed mechanism remains elusive. Herein, we conducted the first converge comprehensive landscape analysis of FAC-related gene CDKN2A in BRCA and disclosed its prognostic value in BRCA. Then, an unsupervised cluster analysis based on CDKN2A-correlated genes unveiled three subtypes, namely cold-immune subtype, IFN-γ activated subtype and FTL-dominant subtype. Subsequent analyses depicting hallmarks of tumor microenvironment (TME) among three subtypes suggested strong association between TNBC and CDKN2A. Given the fact that the most clinically heterogeneous TNBC always displayed the most severe outcomes and lacked relevant drug targets, we further explored the potential of immunotherapy for TNBC by interfering CDKN2A and constructed the CDKN2A-derived prognostic model for TNBC patients by Lasso-Cox. The 21-gene-based prognostic model showed high accuracy and was verified in external independent validation cohort. Moreover, we proposed three drugs for TNBC patients based on our model via targeting epidermal growth factor receptor. In summary, our study indicated the potential of CDKN2A as a pioneering prognostic predictor for TNBC and provided a rationale of immunotherapy for TNBC, and offered fresh perspectives and orientations for cancer treatment via inducing ferroptosis and cuproptosis to develop novel anti-cancer treatment strategies.