To exploit the clinical significance of our observation, we performed an analysis of the TCGA dataset showing that high GDF15 expression associated with increased tumor sizes and poor overall survival in PDAC patients (Additional file 5: Fig. S3C, D), while the PDAC patients with high GDF15 and MAGEA expression distinguished into those with worse overall survival and elevated lymph node metastasis (Fig. 4F, G). Here, GDF15 is linked to neoplasm.