TERT and familial pancreatic carcinoma: Another approach might be to evaluate whether the association between leukocyte telomere length and pancreatic cancer risk is modulated by individual variation in telomere maintenance genes, such as TERT, TRC, TRF1, TRF2, POT1 or Rap1. Indeed, in a nested case-control study of five cohorts, Bao et al. [13] found that three SNPs (rs401681, rs2736100, rs2736098) at TERT were associated with pancreatic cancer risk, of which the minor allele for rs401681 was associated with shorter telomeres.