Restoration of the wt TP53 function has been achieved in different tumour cell systems, including pancreatic cancer cells (Lang et al, 1998; Cascallo et al, 1999; Ghaneh et al, 2001), and resulted in cell cycle arrest or apoptosis, and insensitivity to radiation (Liu et al, 2009) or chemotherapy (Sullivan et al, 2004). Here, TP53 is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.