DUOX2 has been reported to highly express in several types of
cancers. However, the prognostic significance and the
biological function of
DUOX2 expression with
pancreatic cancer (PC) still remain unclear. The present study is aimed at investigating whether
DUOX2 could act as a novel
biomarker of prognosis and evaluating its effect on PC cell progression. The
mRNA and
protein expression of
DUOX2 in PC cells and tissues were assessed by quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) and immunohistochemistry. The effect of
DUOX2 expression on PC cell motility and proliferation was evaluated in vitro. The correlation between
DUOX2 mRNA expression and clinicopathological features and its prognostic significance were analyzed according to the Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) website based on The
Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the GTEx databases combined with our clinical information. According to bioinformatics analysis, we forecasted the upstream
transcription factors (TFs) and
microRNA (
miRNA) regulatory mechanism of
DUOX2 in PC. The expression of
DUOX2 at transcriptional and
protein level was dramatically increased in PC specimens when compared to adjacent nontumor specimens. Functionally,
DUOX2 knockdown inhibited cell motility and proliferation activities. Our clinical data revealed that the patients had better postoperative overall survival (OS) with lower expression of
DUOX2, which is consistent with GEPIA data. Multivariate analysis revealed that high
DUOX2 expression was considered as an independent prognostic
indicator for OS (P = 0.031). Based on Cistrome database, the top 5 TFs of each positively and negatively association with
DUOX2 were predicted.
hsa-miR-5193 and hsa-miR-1343-3p targeting
DUOX2 were forecasted from TargetScan, miRDB, and DIANA-TarBase databases, which were negatively correlated with OS (P = 0.043 and P = 0.0088, respectively) and
DUOX2 expression (P = 0.0093 and P = 0.0032, respectively) in PC from TCGA data. These findings suggest that
DUOX2 acts as a promising predictive
biomarker and an oncogene in PC, which could be a therapeutic target for PC.