HIF1A and familial pancreatic carcinoma: Initially identified as a critical transcription factor mediating cell adaption to hypoxia [9], it was recently found that HIF-1α is overexpressed in pancreatic cancer even under normoxia condition and levels of HIF-1α are positively correlated with tumor progression, angiogenesis, cell migration and poor prognosis [7, 8, 10, 11].