Identification of dephosphorylation related genes prognostic signature in cervical squamous cell carcinoma and endocervical adenocarcinoma

Protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylation play critical regulatory roles in eukaryotic cell metabolism and cancer progression. Although phosphatase-mediated dephosphorylation has been shown to influence multiple signaling pathways in cervical cancer, the prognostic and predictive value of phosphorylation/dephosphorylation-related genes in cervical squamous cell carcinoma and endocervical adenocarcinoma (CESC) has remained poorly explored. This study aimed to develop and validate a prognostic signature of CESC based on dephosphorylation-related genes. Gene expression data and clinical characteristics of patients with CESC were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas database. A prognostic signature was constructed using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression and multivariate Cox regression analyses. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis and receiver operating characteristic curves were used to evaluate the predictive performance of the signature. Six genes were selected to construct a prognostic signature from a pool of 425 dephosphorylation-related genes. Genetic alteration analysis of 291 CESC patients, conducted using the cBioPortal database, revealed that 278 (95.5%) patients harbored alterations in at least one of these 6 genes. Among 278 patients, a total of 28 mutations were detected across 6 genes. The prognostic signature demonstrated strong predictive power, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.802. A 6-gene dephosphorylation-related prognostic signature was successfully developed and validated as an independent predictor of overall survival in patients with CESC. This signature may aid clinicians in the early identification of high-risk patients and in guiding personalized treatment strategies.