Discussion
Overall, DEF6 expression is closely related to cancers and has the potential to act as a cancer biomarker.
Methods
The data were analyzed by mining databases available to the public and by using R software. Moreover, immunohistochemistry was used to validate the
Results
Our results revealed that DEF6 is commonly aberrantly expressed in cancer and its expression is strongly correlated with survival prognosis in a variety of cancer types. Through correlation analysis we found that DEF6 was associated with multiple immune genes and was closely related to immune infiltration. In the enrichment analysis, DEF6 may have cross-talk with multiple cancer pathways and exert oncogenic or pro-cancer functions. In addition, we collected pathological samples from colorectal cancer patients for immunohistochemical analysis and found that patients with higher immunohistochemical scores had more lymph node metastases, higher CA199, and bigger tumor size.