5 protein-based signature for resectable lung squamous cell carcinoma improves the prognostic performance of the TNM staging

IntroductionPrognostic biomarkers have been very elusive in the lung squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and none is currently being used in the clinical setting. We aimed to identify and validate the clinical utility of a protein-based prognostic signature to stratify patients with early lung SCC according to their risk of recurrence or death.MethodsPatients were staged following the new International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) staging criteria (eighth edition, 2018). Three independent retrospective cohorts of 117, 96 and 105 patients with lung SCC were analysed to develop and validate a prognostic signature based on immunohistochemistry for five proteins.ResultsWe identified a five protein-based signature whose prognostic index (PI) was an independent and significant predictor of disease-free survival (DFS) (p