Abstract: Objective The purpose of this study was to investigate the prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by a prognostic risk model we constructed based on the cyber-arisen materials on ferroptosis-related long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). Methods The RNA sequencing data from patients with HCC were downloaded from the Cancer Genome Atlas TCGA database. A prognostic risk model was constructed based on differentially expressed iron death-associated lncRNAs in HCC tissues. Results Five differentially expressed lncRNAs associated with HCC prognosis were identified, and the Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the high-risk lncRNAs were associated with poor prognosis in patients with HCC, with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.873 for 3-year survival;the single sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) revealed immuno- and tumor-related pathways in low-risk populations; the differential analysis of immune functions showed that there were significant differences in cytolytic activity, type I INF response and type II INF response between patients with low and high risk; the immune checkpoint showed that there were also significant differences in the expression of CD44, TNFRSF4 and CD276 between the two groups. Conclusion Five ferroptosis-related lncRNAs impacting the prognosis of patients with HCC are selected by bioinformatics, and we thereby construct a prognostic risk model, which might lay the foundation for the further prevention and therapeutic study on HCC.

Key words: Hepatocellular carcinoma, Ferroptosis, Long non-coding RNA, TCGA database