Chen H, Wang J, Zeng R, et al. - Emerging evidence suggests an important role of mitophagy in the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Researchers herein investigated the correlation between mitophagy-related genes (MRGs) and HCC patients’ prognosis.

• HCC patients from the TCGA cohort were categorized into two immune score groups according to the median immunoscore, while identifying 39 differential expression MRGs.

• Eighteen survival-associated MRGs were screened out by using univariate analysis, and then, a prognosis model was constructed by applying the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) analysis; the model consisted of 9 MRGs (ATG7, ATG9A, BNIP3L, GABARAPL1, HTRA2, MAP1LC3B2, TFE3, TIGAR, and TOMM70).

• In the prognostic model, significantly different overall survival was recorded in the high and low-risk groups.

• The risk score was identified to be the independent factor for predicting the HCC patients’ prognosis.