The secreted/shed form of CSPG4 was undetectable in the supernatants of different pancreatic cancer cell lines, or in highly expressing Panc1 cells (limit of detection 0.15 ng/ml; data not shown) – in contrast to the strong accumulation of sCSPG4 in the supernatants of HeLa cells showing Panc1-like band-2 in the pCSPG4 western blot analysis (Fig. 3C). Here, CSPG4 is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.