Because autophagy has previously been linked to cytoprotection in colon cancer cells (21), we examined this gene set and identified two genes, namely ATG7 and ATG12, that were not only regulated by NURR1 (Fig. 5A and B) but also exhibit clinical characteristics similar to that observed for NURR1 in patients with pancreatic cancer (Figs. 1 and 7). This evidence concerns the gene NR4A2 and familial pancreatic carcinoma.