Furthermore, research in human PDAC tissues showed that GATA6-AS1 was negatively correlated with ETS1 in TCGA-PAAD (R = − 0.331, P < 0.0001), GSE15471 (R = − 0.2712, P = 0.0412) and cohort B (R = − 0.3328, P = 0.0043; Additional file 1: Fig. S6F–H). Here, ETS1 is linked to pancreatic adenocarcinoma.