Studies in pancreatic cancer cell lines have revealed crosstalk between oncogenic KRAS and the Hedgehog signaling pathway, which may suggest oncogenic KRAS plays an important role in activating Hedgehog signaling through the RAF/MEK/MAPK pathway in the absence of Hedgehog ligands during pancreatic tumorigenesis (Koorstra et al., 2008). Here, KRAS is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.