# OCIAD2 as a novel prognostic and therapeutic biomarker for pancreatic cancer: A study based on transcriptomic signature and bioinformatics analysis

## TL;DR

This study identifies OCIAD2 as a potential biomarker for predicting outcomes and guiding treatment in pancreatic cancer patients.

## Contribution

The study introduces OCIAD2 as a novel prognostic and therapeutic target in pancreatic cancer through transcriptomic and bioinformatics analysis.

## Key findings

- OCIAD2 is highly expressed in pancreatic tumor tissues and is associated with the JAK-STAT and cell cycle pathways.
- Knocking down OCIAD2 reduces the expression of key genes in the JAK-STAT and cell cycle pathways.
- OCIAD2 expression correlates with sensitivity to 25 compounds, suggesting its role in drug response.

## Abstract

It is urgent to explore the potential biomarkers for pancreatic cancer (PC) prognosis and treatment to improve patients’ outcomes.

Firstly, we performed an integrated bioinformatics analysis based on extensive transcriptome data from 615 PC tumors and 329 adjacent tissues, screening for genes with prognostic value. We then validated the prognostic value of OCIAD2, DCBLD2, and SAMD9 in different datasets and analyzed their expression levels in single-cell sequencing datasets of normal, paracancer, primary, and metastatic tissues. Next, we further explored the carcinogenic effect after knocking down the expression of OCIAD2 in PC cancer cell line. Finally, a drug sensitivity analysis was conducted.

Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) analysis identified 22 DEGs: ACSL5, ANTXR1, AP1S3, ATP2C2, B3GNT5, C15orf48, CAPG, CTSK, DAPP1, DCBLD2, GPX8, HEPH, IFI44, KRT23, NCF2, OCIAD2, SAMD9, SLC39A10, ST6GALNAC1, TBC1D2, TMSB10 and TSPAN5 with prognostic value in PC, though the related function and mechanism are still unclear. Single-cell sequencing results indicated that OCIAD2 was prominently expressed in ductal cells of primary and metastatic tumors. The expression levels of OCIAD2 mRNA and protein were the highest in pancreatic tumor tissues. Mechanism studies revealed that STAT1 and STAT2 in the JAK-STAT pathway and CCND1, CDK1, and CDK2 in the cell cycle pathway were significantly down-regulated after OCIAD2 knockdown. Drug sensitivity analysis identified 25 compounds significantly associated with OCIAD2.

These results indicate that OCIAD2 is a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for PC patients.

Pancreatic cancer is the most malignant tumor, and there is no ideal targeted drug at present, so the prognosis of patients is very poor. There is an urgent need to find targets for evaluating prognosis and treatment. In this study, we identified a number of poorly understood but potentially important prognostic genes based on transcriptome data from a large number of pancreatic cancer samples. Also based on transcriptome data from pancreatic cancer samples and cell lines, we focused on the activation of JAK-STAT and cell cycle pathways by OCIAD2 overexpression in pancreatic cancer patients. Meanwhile, we also analyzed the sensitivity of patients with different OCIAD2 expression to 545 drugs and identified 25 important drugs. These results suggest that OCIAD2 is a potential novel biomarker for prognosis and targeted therapy in patients with pancreatic cancer, which deserves more attention and research.