Exploration of Targeted Anti-tumor Therapy

Table 1. The association of lethal 3 malignant brain tumor like 4 (L3MBTL4) methylation and clinical factors in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).

Variables	Number	Methylation status		P value
Variables	Number	Unmethylation N = 214	Methylation N = 84	P value
Sex				0.2841
Female	108	82	26	-
Male	190	132	58	-
Age (years)				0.7346
≤ 50	52	36	16	-
> 50	246	178	68	-
Smoking				0.5107
No	183	134	49	-
Yes	115	80	35	-
Alcohol				0.7963
No	164	119	45	-
Yes	134	95	39	-
Differentiation				< 0.001^***
Well or moderate	140	119	21	-
Poor	158	95	63	-
Nerve invasion				0.1183
No	86	56	30	-
Yes	212	158	54	-
Tumor size (cm)				0.0066^**
≤ 4	237	179	58	-
> 4	61	35	26	-
Lymph node metastasis				0.4207
Negative	195	143	52	-
Positive	103	71	32	-
TNM stage				> 0.9999
Stage I–II	269	193	76	-
Stage III–VI	29	21	8	-

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P values are obtained from the chi-square test. **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. TNM: tumor-node-metastasis.

Supplementary materials

The supplementary tables for this article are available at: https://www.explorationpub.com/uploads/Article/file/1002382_sup_1.pdf.

The supplementary figure for this article is available at: https://www.explorationpub.com/uploads/Article/file/1002382_sup_2.pdf.

The supplementary materials for this article are available at: https://www.explorationpub.com/uploads/Article/file/1002382_sup_3.xlsx.

Declarations

Acknowledgments

We appreciate Jiadong Wang from Peking University for providing the general gift of U2OS cells and Elizabeth M. Jaffee from Johns Hopkins University for the gift of PANC3.11 and PANC10.05 cells.

Author contributions

YY: Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing—original draft. Yuan L: Methodology, Validation. AG: Data curation, Methodology, Writing—original draft, Funding acquisition. CZ: Formal analysis, Methodology. RW: Methodology. Yazhuo L: Data curation, Methodology. XS: Methodology. MZ: Data curation, Writing—original draft, Funding acquisition. MG: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing—review & editing, Funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the submitted version.

Conflicts of interest

Mingzhou Guo, who is the Editorial Board Member and Guest Editor of Exploration of Targeted Anti-tumor Therapy, had no involvement in the decision-making or the review process of this manuscript. The other authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

The study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Chinese PLA General Hospital (Approval No. 20090701-015, 20160204-26 and S2025-791-01). The animal experiments were performed according to procedures approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of the Chinese PLA General Hospital (Approval No. 2021-X17-44).

Consent to participate

Informed consent to participate in the study was obtained from all participants.

Consent to publication

Not applicable.

Availability of data and materials

The data in the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2025ZD0544700), National Natural Science Foundation of China (82272632, 82403742), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (7254313) and Youth Innovation Science Foundation of Chinese PLA general hospital (22QNCZ027). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Copyright

Publisher’s note

Open Exploration maintains a neutral stance on jurisdictional claims in published institutional affiliations and maps. All opinions expressed in this article are the personal views of the author(s) and do not represent the stance of the editorial team or the publisher.

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