In order to study the molecular mechanism that regulates VMP1 expression in the context of gemcitabine induced-autophagy in pancreatic tumor cells, a 3,005 bp sequence of the 5′ upstream region of the human gene VMP1 was amplified and cloned in the pGL3 reporter vector (pGL3.vmp1-3005) (Figure 4A). Here, VMP1 is linked to pancreatic neoplasm.