Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has long been acknowledged to have a dismal prognosis. Therefore, prognostic markers, especially molecular ones, are of interest. So far, expression of Neural Wiskott‐Aldrich syndrome protein (N‐WASP) and its associations with clinicopathologic variables and prognosis for patients with PDAC remain unknown.

N‐WASP expression was detected by immunohistochemical staining in a tissue microarray consisted of tumor and nontumor samples from 86 patients with PDAC. The correlations of N‐WASP expression with clinicopathologic features and overall survival were evaluated. In addition, risk factors of perineural invasion (PNI) were identified.

High expression of N‐WASP was more frequent in tumor than in nontumor tissues of PDAC patients (45.3 vs. 19.8 %, p < 0.001). The rank of N‐WASP grading was significantly higher in tumor tissues than in nontumor tissues (p = 0.048). Also, high expression of N‐WASP in tumor tissues was significantly associated with PNI, and lymph node status had a marginally significant relation to tumoral N‐WASP expression. Univariate analyses showed that, in addition to conventional clinicopathologic variables, including sex, histologic grade, PNI and lymph node metastasis, high tumoral N‐WASP expression was an independent marker of PNI and served as a significant predictor of poor overall survival. The prognostic implication of N‐WASP expression was not proven In the multivariate analysis.

Our data showed highly up‐regulated expression of N‐WASP in PDAC tissues, its correlations with PNI, and its association with an unfavorable prognosis.