SOX9 and familial pancreatic carcinoma: Prior to studying the effects of SOX9 on differentiation and cell growth in pancreatic cancer, we investigated the expression level of the SOX9 protein in several well-characterized pancreatic cancer cell lines, AsPC-1, BxPC-3, Colo357, Capan-2, MiaPaCa-2, and Panc1 [28] (Figure 1A).