Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-associated mortality worldwide and its prognosis is poor. Few effective biomarkers for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have been translated into the clinical practice aiming to assist in the treatment plan design and prognosis evaluation. The aim of the present study was to identify novel potential prognostic biomarkers for NSCLC. Tripartite motif 59 (TRIM59) was identified from a microarray dataset of matched-samples and was verified as an aberrantly upregulated gene in NSCLC tissue. The expression level of TRIM59 in NSCLC subtypes was observed to be significantly increased in large cell lung carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma as compared with that in adenocarcinoma. Its expression correlated with several clinicopathological features, including gender, smoking habits, and unfavorable tumor node and pathological stages. Notably, TRIM59 demonstrated a negative correlation with survival time and its overexpression indicated a poor prognosis in NSCLC. Furthermore, univariate and multivariate Cox's regression analyses indicated that TRIM59 was an independent prognostic factor in tumor tissue as compared with age, gender, tumor stage, node stage, and metastasis. Gene set enrichment analysis and protein-protein interaction network construction revealed that TRIM59 was associated with oncogenic mammalian target of rapamycin (MTOR) and eukaryotic initiation factor 4E (EIF4E) signaling through ubiquitin C binding. In conclusion, it was revealed that TRIM59 is a novel prognostic biomarker modulating oncogenic MTOR and EIF4E signaling pathways in NSCLC. These findings provided a novel insight into the clinical application of TRIM59. Therefore, TRIM59 may serve as an independent predictor for prognosis and a potential therapeutic target for NSCLC.
Keywords: Tripartite motif 59; biomarker; non-small cell lung cancer; prognostic value.