Previous reports have shown that the downregulation of NUCB1 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma indicates poor prognosis (Hua et al., 2021), and the N-terminal DNA-binding domain of NUCB1 can bind to canonical E-box sequences and induce cell epithelial–mesenchymal transition (Sinha et al., 2019). Here, NUCB1 is linked to pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.