The Diagnostic Role and Potential Pharmacological Value of DDR1 in Pan-Cancer.

Introduction: Cancer remains a devastating global health burden. Despite the identification of numerous biological targets, effective therapeutic agents remain limited. As a highly promising novel target, the role of Discoid Domain Receptors (DDRs) in pan-cancer biology is still poorly characterized. Thus, this study aims to elucidate the regulatory mechanisms and diagnostic potential of DDR1 across different cancer types.

Methods: Herein, we used UCSC, SangerBox, GEPIA, GSCA, and GeneMANIA online databases to analyze the expression and role of DDR1 in pan-cancer.

Results: The expression levels of DDR1 showed significant differences in some tumour T, N, and M stages. Importantly, DDR1 expression was associated with clinical prognosis in five cancers. In addition, DDR1 was inversely correlated with most immune checkpoint pathways, immunomodulatory genes, and immune cell infiltration in a few cancers. Furthermore, in most cancers, DDR1 promotes cancer progression by promoting apoptosis, inhibiting cell cycle and EMT, activating hormone AR activity, activating PI3K/AKT pathway, RASMAPK pathway, and RTK pathway. Finally, we also found that the DDR1 gene was positively associated with stemness scores in most tumors.

Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that DDR1 exhibits diagnostic utility and holds promising translational potential as a therapeutic target across multiple cancer types.