BackgroundHuman health and life are threatened by cancer with high morbidity and mortality worldwide. In many experiments, CDKN1B level is associated with cancer risk, Nevertheless, no pan-cancer analysis has been conducted on CDKN1B in human cancers.MethodsWith the help of bioinformatics, a pan-cancer analysis was conducted on the expression levels of CDKN1B in cancer tissues and adjacent tissues from the TCGA, CPTAC and GEO databases. The CDKN1B expression levels in tumor patients was further validated using immunohistochemistry (IHC) and quantitative real-time PCR.ResultsIn the study, we first investigated the cancer-related roles of CDKN1B’s in 40 tumors with malignancy. The CDKN1B gene encodes the p27Kip1protein, which can block the production cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK), which is obviously related to the function and survival of cancer cells and alters the prognosis of cancer patients. Furthermore, CDKN1B function requires both protein processing and RNA metabolism. Additionally, the elevated expression of the CDKN1B gene and protein was validated in several cancer tissues from the patients.ConclusionsThese results showed that the levels of CDKN1B were considerably different in a number of cancer tissues, offering a potential future target for cancer therapy.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12672-023-00746-8.