EVERY year, 112,000 Americans die of gastrointestinal cancer, and carcinoma of the pancreas accounts for 22 percent of these deaths.¹ It is a disease with an extremely poor prognosis: fewer than 20 percent of affected patients survive the first year, and only 3 percent are alive five years after the diagnosis.² In fact, of more than 60 cancer sites surveyed for the Annual Cancer Statistics Review, pancreatic carcinoma is the one with the lowest five-year survival rate.² Despite this grim outcome, considerable progress has been made in our understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease, our ability to diagnose . . .