Interestingly, although MALAT-1, HOTAIR and HOTTIP exhibit similar functional pro-oncogenic activities in pancreatic cancer cells (Fig 1), the targeted (RNAi) loss of any one of these lncRNAs cannot be rescued by the other two lncRNAs and this supports the array data showing their regulation of different sets of genes, and we are currently investigating the functions of key genes differentially regulated by MALAT-1, HOTTIP and HOTAIR. Here, HOTAIR is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.