The results reported in the present study are in concordance with the study by Abe and coworkers that demonstrated no BNIP3 expression in 6 out of 12 pancreatic cancer cell lines under normoxic conditions, due to DNA methylation of the CpG island of BNIP3 gene in the region around the transcription start site [38]. Here, BNIP3 is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.