ANK1 and pancreatic neoplasm: But ankyrin-1 expression was also significantly associated with poorly differentiated cancers (p<0.04) and a multivariate analysis of prognostic factors associated with outcome of pancreatic cancer (including ankyrin-1 expression, tumor grade, lymph node metastasis, perineural invasion, vascular invasion and maximum tumor diameter) using the Cox proportional hazards model did not find that ankyrin-1 overexpression was an independent predictor of outcome (Relative risk, 1.22; P =0.26; Figure 3B).