Abstract

   Lymph node metastasis is the most important prognostic factor in
   patients with lung squamous cell carcinoma. The current findings show
   that lymph node metastatic tumor cells can arise by programming
   metastasis in primary tumor cells. Thereby, the genetic alterations
   responsible for the metastasis could be detected in the primary tumors.
   This bioinformatic study aimed to determine novel potential prognostic
   biomarkers shared between primary lung squamous cell tumors (without
   lymph node metastasis) and lymphatic metastasis, using the Cancer
   Genome Atlas database. Differentially expressed genes were screened by
   limma statistical package in R environment. Gene ontology and
   biological pathways analyses were performed using Enrichr for
   up-regulated and down-regulated genes. Also, we selected lymph node
   metastasis related genes among DEGs using correlation analysis between
   DEGs and suitable references genes for metastasis. Receiver operating