STING1 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: Since the above results showed that tumor depth, lymph node metastasis, and STING methylation could serve as independent prognostic indicators of OS of the TCGA LUAD patients, we built a prognostic nomogram based on these variables (Since there was only one case with N3 status, this case was excluded from this analysis) for predicting the probability of 1- and 2-year OS (Fig. 6a).