Systematical identifications of prognostic meaningful lung adenocarcinoma subtypes and the underlying mutational and expressional characters
Abstract Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is one of the most common cancer types. However, the high heterogeneity and complexity of LUAD hinder effective treatments. This study aimed to identify the key prognosis impacting genes and the corresponding subtypes for LUAD. Specifically, the cox proportional hazards model was combined with a causal regulatory network to help reveal which genes play master roles among numerous prognosis impacting genes, and sub-types were identified based on expressional profiles of the master genes. As results, a collection of 75 genes were recognized as the master prognosis impacting genes, where some were enriched in mTOR signaling and lysosome pathways. Based on their expressions, the LUAD patients were separated into two sub-types displaying remarkable differences in expressional profiles, prognostic outcomes and genomic mutations. Meanwhile, the two subtypes were re-discovered from two additional LUAD cohorts based on only the top-10 important master genes. This study provides a comprehensive description on the key prognosis-relevant genes and an alternative way to classify LUAD subtypes which can promote LUAD precision treatment.