ACTA1 and familial pancreatic carcinoma: To determine whether the ras-induced transformation of fibroblasts into myofibroblasts relied on a palladin dependent pathway, we utilized shRNA to generate stable clones of HDF with palladin knockdown and then measured palladin and α-SMA production after 9 days of co-culture of the normal fibroblasts with the pancreatic cancer cell line, Panc-1.