To evaluate whether the PDAC classifier encodes proteins that are causally related to PDAC development and progression, we selected two of the genes, TMPRSS4, that has been previously linked to PDAC and other types of cancer [19–25] and ECT2, an oncogene that has previously been shown to be overexpressed in PDAC and other types of cancer [26]. Here, TMPRSS4 is linked to cancer.