High expression of DDR1 is associated with the poor prognosis in Chinese patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Background: discoidin domain receptors 1 (ddr1),a subtype of ddrs,has been reported as a critical modulator of cellular morphogenesis,differentiation,migration and invasion. methods and results: in this study,we investigated the expression of ddr1 and its clinical association in chinese patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (pdac). across a cohort of 30 patients,we examined ddr1 expression in paired pdac and corresponding adjacent non-tumor tissues by real-time quantitative pcr (rt-qpcr),or western blotting. ddr1 expression is significantly higher in pdac,as compared to normal adjacent tissue,confirming results from the oncomine databases. we validated ddr1 expression by immunohistochemistry across a non-overlapping cohort of 205 pdac specimens. kaplan-meier survival curves indicate that increased expression of ddr1 is associated with a poor prognosis in pdac patients (p = 0.013). multivariate cox regression analysis identified ddr1 expression,age,n classification and liver metastasis as independent prognostic factors in pdac. conclusions: this study demonstrated that ddr1 can well serve as a novel prognostic biomarker in pdac. © 2015 huo et al.