Objective To detect the expressions of decoy receptor 3 (DcR3) in pancreatic cancer tissues and to analyze the significance of DcR3 in the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of patients with pancreatic cancer.Methods The expressions of DcR3 in pancreatic cancer tissues (n =100), paracancer tissues (n =15) and normal tissues (n =15) were detected with immunohistochemical method (Envision method).Results The positive rate of DcR3 in pancreatic cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in adjacent-tumor pancreatic cancer tissues (86.0％ vs.46.6％, P ＜ 0.05).The positive rate of DcR3 in adjacent-tumor pancreatic cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in normal tissues (46.6％ vs.13.3％, P ＜ 0.05).In clinical stage Ⅲ, the positive rate of DcR3 was significantly higher than that in stage Ⅱ and stage Ⅰ (100％ vs.87.0％, P＜0.05;100％ vs.62.5％, P＜0.05).There were significant differences among the three groups (P ＜ 0.05).With lymph node metastasis, the DcR3 positive rate was significantly higher than that in the group without lymph node metastasis (93.4％ vs.79.6％, P ＜ 0.05).In poorly differentiated pancreatic cancer, the positive rate of DcR3 was significantly higher than that in the highly differentiated group (100％ vs.64.0％, P ＜0.05), the positive rate of DcR3 was significantly higher in the moderately differentiated group than that in the highly differentiated group (88.6％ vs.64.0％, P ＜ 0.05) , There were significant differences among the three groups (P ＜ 0.05).There was no significant difference in the positive rate of DcR3 between the different age groups or the different gender groups (P ＞ 0.05).Conclusions The expression levels of DcR3 in patients with pancreatic cancer gradually increased from normal tissues to paracancer tissues, to pancreas tissues.The expression level of DcR3 protein was closely related to clinical stage, degree of tissue differentiation and presence of lymph node metastasis, but not associated with age, sex, and tumor diameter size.