Fig. 1

Association of high RPTOR expression or the ceramide pathway with NSCLC-BM. A, B RNA sequencing showed that RPTOR was more highly expressed in BM than other genes like PLP1, GFAP, TF, PMP2 and TUBB4A, which was validated by qRT-PCR. C, D IHC analysis showed that the BM + group reported a higher RPTOR expression and score than the BM- group (100x, 200 × magnification, scale bar = 100 μm). E Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that the median survival was significantly lower in the high RPTOR (18 samples with IHC scores ≥ 6) than in the low RPTOR subgroup (15 samples with IHCs ≤ 3) in the BM + patients. F, G H1299 and PC9 cell lines were chosen to be our experiment cell lines due to their significantly higher RPTOR expression than those in other LUAD cell lines. H, I The whole-exome sequencing (WES) was used to screen different genes from the BM + and BM- groups. A DAGM model was constructed to assess the role of somatic variants in the signaling pathways. The ceramide signaling pathway was found to be involved in the BM progress