CD44 and pancreatic neoplasm: In order to determine whether increased Hh activity is a property of all pancreatic tumor cells or is selective for the CSC, Li et al. demonstrated, using quantitative real time-pcr, that Shh transcripts were 4-fold upregulated in the bulk pancreatic xenograft cells and 43-fold upregulated in the CD44+CD24+ESA+ pancreatic CSC as compared with normal pancreatic epithelial cells [33].