BackgroundTP53 is an important tumor suppressor gene located on human chromosome 17. TP53 mutations have been confirmed in more than 60% of tumor patients' somatic cells. N6-methyladenosine is an enzyme that plays an important role in mRNA splicing, translation, and stabilization. It is a common internal modification of nucleotides, that is regulated by methyltransferases ("writer"), binding proteins ("reader"), and demethylases ("eraser"). However, its role in TP53 mutant non-small-cell lung cancer remains unknown. In this study, we investigated 17 common N-6-Methyladenosine regulators' contributions and prognostic values.Methods and MaterialsThe expression sets of 233 TP53 mutant NSCLC and 236 TP53 wild type NSCLC patients were downloaded from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) databases with their simple nucleotide variation and their clinical messages. 17 m6A regulators were systematically analyzed in our study, which including 8 "writers" (METTL3/14/16, WTAP, RBM15/15B, KIAA1429, ZC3H13), 7 "readers" (YTHDF1/2/3, YTHDC1/2, HNRNPA2B1, HNRNPC), 2 "erasers" (FTO, ALKBH5). Consensus clustering was used to classify TP53 mutant NSCLC and TP53 wild type NSCLC into two subgroups. Univariate and multivariate cox regression were used to construct a prognostic signature and compute risk score based to m6A regulators’ expression in TP53 mutant and wild type NSCLC. Gene Ontology (GO), Gene Set enrich analysis (GSEA), STRING and Cytoscape tools were used to find different signaling pathways and biological processes between TP53 mutant and wild type NSCLC.ResultsWilcox test showed that 9 of 17 m6A regulators were expressed differently between TP53 mutant and wild type NSCLC (p < 0.05). Then consensus clustering has been used for tumor typing and a new way of typing is attempted, while the groups obtained by consensus clustering couldn’t predict prognostic well in mutant and wild type patients (p = 0.121 in wild type and p = 0.089 in mutant). Using univariate cox regression analysis, ALKBH5, HNRNPA2B1 were associated with the prognostic of TP53 mutant patients. Then we built signatures of N-6-Methyladenosine regulators with prognostic ability based on the multivariate cox regression in TP53 mutant cohorts. Moreover, we found that this signature could predict the prognostic in mutant cohort well (p < 0.001, AUG > 0.6). With this signature, patients with TP53 mutations can be divided into high and low risk groups. Finally, we found 338 DEGs between high and low risk groups, then GO enrichment analysis, PPI network was used to analysis different signaling pathways between two groups.ConclusionIn conclusion, our study showed m6A regulators can be used as predictive prognostic tools in TP53 mutant patients.