The results showed that only three feature genes—ANO1, AHNAK2, and ADAM9, were significantly associated with prognosis in all three analyses (p < 0.05) (Fig. 9 and Additional file 1: Fig. S1, S2 and S3), which means that these three feature genes may act as molecular markers for predicting the prognosis of pancreatic cancer patients. Here, ANO1 is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.