When patients with pancreatic cancer were distinguished from patients with chronic pancreatitis, plasma PIM-1 levels were also significantly superior to CA19-9 levels (0.895 vs. 0.785, respectively; P = 0.0178), but the specificity was lower (77.8 vs. 88.9 %) (Fig. 6a). Here, PIM1 is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.