We confirmed a set of nine genes (HMMR, B4GALT1, SLC16A3, ANGPTL4, EXT1, GPC1, RBCK1, SOD1, and AGRN) that were significantly associated with metastasis and overall survival (OS) in the test series.
Immunohistochemical studies from near 100 pairs of PTC tissue and their adjacent non-tumor counterparts further showed that AGRN (<i>n =</i> 98), CTSC (<i>n =</i> 99), ERAP2 (<i>n =</i> 98) and GPNMB (<i>n =</i> 100) were significantly (<i>p</i> < 0.05) overexpressed in PTC and higher expression levels of AGRN and CTSC were also significantly associated with metastasis and poor prognosis of PTC patients.