Aberrant accumulation of Dickkopf 4 promotes tumor progression via forming the immune suppressive microenvironment in gastrointestinal stromal tumor.

Our findings identified DKK4 as a proper tumor biomarker for prognosis predicting and recurrence monitoring, and suggested a novel immune-escape mechanism driving malignancy in GIST, which might be a potential therapeutic target to improve the effects of canonical RTK therapy and combined immunotherapy.