As discussed above, our results indicated that although EGFR is a potential therapeutic target for pancreatic cancer, EGFR expression alone had limited clinical and prognostic significance in PDAC and the role of EGFR in PDAC carcinogenesis is complex, which is also supported by the fact that EGFR expression is not predictive of the erlotinib response in PDAC [21]. Here, EGFR is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.