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. This evidence concerns the gene AHNAK2 and familial pancreatic carcinoma.