Abstract
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. In recent years, the incidence of lung cancer subtype lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) has steadily increased. Mitochondria, as a pivotal site of cell bioenergetics, metabolism, cell signaling, and cell death, are often dysregulated in lung cancer cells. Mitochondria maintenance and integrity depend on mitochondrial quality control proteins (MQCPs). During lung cancer progression, the levels of MQCPs could change and promote cancer cell adaptation to the microenvironment and stresses. Here, univariate and multivariate proportional Cox regression analyses were applied to develop a signature based on the level of MQCPs (dimeric form of BNIP3, DRP1, and SIRT3) in tumorous and non-tumorous samples of 80 patients with LUAD. The MQCP signature could be used to separate the patients with LUAD into high- and low-risk groups. Survival analysis indicated that patients in the high-risk group had dramatically shorter overall survival compared with the low-risk patients. Moreover, a nomogram combining clinicopathologic features and the MQCP signature was constructed and validated to predict 1-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival of the patients. Thus, this study presents a novel signature based on MQCPs as a reliable prognostic tool to predict overall survival for patients with LUAD.