As shown in Fig. 1, D2, SOX2 was the most important variable, followed by AADAC, FAM83A, UPK1B and MYEOV. Multivariate cox proportional regression performed for the top-20 most important genes revealed that high expression of the genes SOX2, AADAC, FAM83A, MYEOV, UPKB1, ZIC5, ARL14, LYPD2, CALB1 and MAGEA12 was associated with poor survival across all analyzed 27 cancer entities (Suppl. This evidence concerns the gene SOX2 and cancer.