• pancreatic cancer
• mutations
• gene expression

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the seventh cause of death for cancer worldwide and the third in the USA, where it is expected to become the second by year 2030. Unlike other cancers, little progress has been made when it comes to therapeutic options other than surgery, which is possible only for a small fraction (~20%) of patients presenting with localised disease.1 2

For the above reasons, large efforts have been undertaken to get a deeper understanding of the molecular alterations and their effects on cancer cells and tumour microenvironment, by exploiting both innovative disease models and high-throughput studies for genomic and transcriptomic profiling of PDAC.3 4 In the meanwhile, genome-wide association studies, and the study of familial pancreatic cancer, have been looking for and found genetic variations associated to PDAC onset and outcome.5 6

At the genomic level, mutations in the coding region of several genes have been consistently identified, together with disruptive structural alterations whose effect has been linked to the altered functionality (eg, KRAS, TP53) or loss (eg, CDNK2A, SMAD4, ARID1A, ROBO2, BRCA1/2) of the respective gene products. Frequent and rare alterations identified converge in specific pathways, such as Wnt/Notch, Hedgehog, axon guidance, transforming growth factor beta, SWI/SNF (SWItch/sucrose non-fermentable) and DNA damage repair.3 RNA expression profiles, on the other …