SMAD3 and neoplasm: According to what has already been shown ex vivo on human pancreatic cancer (Bailey and Leach, 2012; De La O et al., 2008; Hu et al., 2012), we confirmed in vivo the upregulation of the Notch signaling pathway during tumor onset (Fig. 5), followed by the upregulation of the TGFβ/Smad3 pathway during tumor progression (Fig. 5; supplementary material Movies 1, 2).