SHH and familial pancreatic carcinoma: To investigate whether SHH proteins secreted from pancreatic cancer cells actually activate the hedgehog signaling pathway in fibroblasts, we transiently transfected MIA PaCa-2 cells with the SHH expression vector or its empty vector, harvested the resultant conditioned media, cultured mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) in either of them after transient transfection with the (3’Gli-BS)4-luc reporter gene, and performed the luciferase assay.