HMMR  is a prognostic-related biomarker of p ancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma  and promotes the development of  p ancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Abstract Background HMMR is an essential oncogene, which is highly expressed in most tumors and is related to the survival and prognosis of many tumors. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD) is a common malignant tumor of the digestive tract. The five-years overall survival (OS) is less than 10%. This study aim to investigate the relationship between HMMR expression and survival prognosis in patients with different tumors, the function of HMMR in pancreatic ductal adenocarinoma (PDAC) cells and explore the possible mechanisms in tumorigensis and development. Methods The Oncomine, Tumor Immunoassay Resource (TIMER) and GEPIA databases were used for assessing the expression of HMMR, after which PrognoScan database and Kaplan-Meier plotter database was used to explore the relationship between HMMR and tumour outcomes including overall survival (OS), diseases free survival (DFS) and relapse free survival (RFS). Then, we investigated the function of HMMR in PDAC cells. Finally, we conduct HMMR-related gene enrichment analysis. Results We determined HMMR expression to be significantly correlated with outcome in multiple types of cancer in the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), with the effect being particularly pronounced in pancreatic ductal adenocarinoma. Elevated HMMR expression was found to be significantly correlated with PDAC staging and grade. Furthermore, we found that HMMR promotes the proliferation, invasion and migration of PDAC cells. The KEGG data suggest that “Oocyte meiosis”, “Cell cycle”, “Progesterone-mediated oocyte maturation”, “FoxO signaling pathway” and “p53 signaling pathway” might be involved in the effect of HMMR on tumor pathogenesis. Conclusions HMMR is high expression and associated with patient outcome in multiple cancer types, in addition, HMMR is a key factor which governs invasion and migration to PDAC, potentially playing a vital role in governing tumor invasion and migration and thus representing a valuable prognostic biomarker in PDAC patients.