CD44 and pancreatic neoplasm: Because altered expression of CD24, CD44, and SLC16A1 is highly associated with the anchorage-independent growth and invasive activities of pancreatic derivative cancer cells, we investigated the potential clinical significance of these findings by comparing survival rates of patients with high or low expression of these three genes using the TCGA Pancreatic Cancer (PAAD) database (n = 182, http://xena.ucsc.edu/).