The clinical relevance of the Hippo pathway in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Purpose The Hippo pathway has broadened in cancer research in the past decade and revealed itself to be an important driver for tumorigenesis and metastatic spread. In this study, we investigated the clinical relevance of the Hippo pathway with regard to metastatic invasion, patients’ outcome and histopathological features. Methods Protein expression of components of the Hippo pathway were analyzed by immunohistochemistry (IHC) using paraffin-embedded tissue from 103 patients who had been diagnosed with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and had undergone surgery. Results were correlated with clinicopathological data, disease-free and overall survival. Results Immunohistochemistry studies in pancreatic tumour tissues revealed a significant upregulation of MST1, MST2, pLATS, pYAP and 14-3-3, representing the active Hippo pathway, in non-metastasized patients ( p