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Updated: Sep 10, 2025

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A unified model for Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene involvement in cancer: context-dependent tumour suppression and

Lee Machado1, Leanne Jones1,2, Sonika Divakar1

  • 1Centre for Physical Activity and Life Sciences, University of Northampton, UK.

FEBS Open Bio
|August 20, 2025
PubMed

Insights

The Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene (DMD) has a dual role in cancer, acting as a tumor suppressor in aggressive cancers and an oncogene in less aggressive ones. This context-dependent function impacts patient survival outcomes across various tumor types.

Area of Science:

  • Oncology
  • Genetics
  • Molecular Biology

Background:

  • The Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene (DMD) is implicated in cancer development, but its precise role remains unclear.
  • Existing evidence on DMD's impact on cancer survival is inconsistent, necessitating further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To comprehensively analyze the global impact of DMD gene expression on survival outcomes across 33 distinct cancer types.
  • To elucidate the context-dependent role of DMD in tumorigenesis, differentiating between tumor suppressive and oncogenic functions.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized bulk RNA sequencing data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) for global analysis.
  • Employed Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazard modeling to assess survival associations.
  • Conducted pathway analysis and hierarchical clustering to explore underlying mechanisms.

Main Results:

  • DMD expression significantly correlated with survival in nine cancer types (Bonferroni corrected, α=0.0015).
  • High DMD expression was associated with improved survival in some cancers and worsened outcomes in others.
  • The Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene (DMD) transcript Dp71ab mirrored total DMD trends, highlighting distinct tumor groups with opposing survival associations.

Conclusions:

  • DMD does not function uniformly as an oncogene or tumor suppressor across all cancers.
  • A context-dependent dual model is proposed: high DMD expression is tumor suppressive in aggressive cancers and oncogenic in less aggressive tumors.
  • Divergent effects of DMD may be linked to specific dystrophin-associated protein complex (DAPC) components involved in signaling and adhesion.
Keywords:
Dp71Duchennecancerdystrophindystrophin‐associated protein complex

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