POLK

Across TCGA pan-cancer cohorts, POLK mass-spec protein is linked to patient survival in 6 of 34 cancer types, making it a survival-associated POLK data layer compared with 24 for mass-spec protein and 7 for mutation status.

The strongest signal is observed in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC), where higher POLK mass-spec protein is associated with worse disease-free survival. In most high-consensus cancer types, elevated POLK expression acts as an unfavorable survival marker, although some lineages such as COAD and UCEC show a favorable association.

HNSC, PDAC, and COAD are the cancer types where POLK mass-spec protein most reproducibly stratifies survival.

mass-spec protein survival associations by lineage

Ranked by sampling consensus. AUC1 and AUC2 indicate survival in the high- and low-expression groups, respectively; the lower AUC marks the poorer-surviving group. p-values are from the log-rank test.

Lineage	Measure	Split	Stage	AUC1 high	AUC2 low	p	Sampling consensus
HNSC	DFS	Median	II,III,IV	0.877	1.000	.006	9	view →
PDAC	DFS	Median	II,III,IV	0.319	0.530	.008	8	view →
COAD	DFS	Median	III,IV	1.000	0.565	.036	6	view →
UCEC	OS	Tertile	II,III,IV	1.000	0.573	.022	4	view →
LSCC	OS	Quartile	III,IV	0.546	0.986	.021	4	view →
LUAD	DFS	Tertile	All	0.827	0.707	.048	1	view →

Pink = unfavorable, green = favorable. Showing the 6 strongest of 6 lineages.

POLK–HNSC (DFS)

Open the HNSC breakdown →