Mu R, Liu H, Luo S, et al. - Researchers assessed links between 31,032 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 368 mitotic phase-related pathway genes and overall survival (OS) of patients suffering from non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The discovery dataset comprised 1185 NSCLC patients from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. For validation, they used another dataset including 984 patients from the Harvard Lung Cancer Susceptibility Study. CHEK1 rs76744140 T>C, PRIM2 rs6939623 G>T and CDK6 rs113181986 G>C were the three independent SNPs that were revealed to be significantly related to NSCLC OS. As noted in expression quantitative trait loci analysis, CHEK1 mRNA expression levels in normal lung tissues were predicted by rs76744140C allele and expression levels of CDK6 mRNA in whole blood tissues were predicted by rs113181986C allele. In additional analyses, it was suggested that NSCLC survival may be influenced by CHEK1, PRIM2 and CDK6. In the light of these observations, it was inferred that these genetic variants may serve as prognostic biomarkers in NSCLC.