The level of compressive stress used in this study (4.0 mmHg) was in agreement with experimental estimations of solid stress in pancreatic tumor models21, and it is used herein to enhance the metastatic potential of MIA PaCa-2 and BxPC-3 pancreatic cancer cell lines, as indicated by a scratch wound assay (Fig. 1a,b), and to upregulate GDF15 expression and secretion, as indicated by qPCR and Western Blotting (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 3). The gene discussed is GDF15; the disease is familial pancreatic carcinoma.