Finally, we evaluated the expression level of HNF1A in PC tissues; lower HNF1A expression was correlated with shorter overall survival in patients with PC.
HNF1A/B seem to be good candidates as master regulators of pancreatic differentiation, which at the protein level loses its expression in malignant ductal cells of the pancreas, suggesting its putative role as tumor suppressor in pancreatic cancer.
By using the ICSNPathway to analyze pancreatic cancer GWAS data, 18 candidate SNPs, 11 genes (including ADCY9, ADCY10, HNF1A, and HNF4G), and 30 pathways were identified that might contribute to the susceptibility of patients to pancreatic cancer.
LKM test identified four genes that were significantly associated with risk of pancreatic cancer after Bonferroni correction (P<1×10(-5)): ABO, HNF1A, OR13C4, and SHH.