Orientation-specific RT-PCR was employed to determine the strandedness of the eleven intronic transcripts mapping to introns of MAPK pathway or/and apoptosis-related genes, namely ARRB1, ATF2, MAPK1, MAP2K5, MAP3K1, MAP3K14, PPP3CB, RAPGF2, TGFβR2, DAPK1 and PTEN. These experiments were performed using total RNA isolated from pancreatic tumor tissue samples or from cultured MIA PaCa-2 cells. The gene discussed is ATF2; the disease is pancreatic neoplasm.