It has been reported that most miRNA promoters are located within 500 bp upstream of the pre-miRNA sequence [35], suggesting the putative miR-615 specific promoter lies close to the start of the intron or in the first coding exon of HOXC5. The region upstream of mir-615, within the limits of the large CpG island spanning most of the HOXC5 locus (Fig. 4), undergoes DNA methylation in pancreatic cancer cell lines and is reported as including a promoter for mir-615 [36] although no precise promoter elements were identified. Here, HOXC5 is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.