ATM and familial pancreatic carcinoma: Preclinical studies have demonstrated the potential effectiveness of PARP inhibitors in targeting pancreatic cancers demonstrating biallelic inactivation of the ATM gene and clinical trials are underway investigating the role of PARP-inhibition with DNA damaging agents in patients with or without BRCA-mutations (NCT01908478, NCT01585805) (Williamson et al., 2012).