salt concentrations, and increased amylase activity at some sampling points. IL17a expression in the DI following 99 days of exposure was also significantly increased. But these responses may not be of biological significance since they did not appear to impact general fish health, and may be as much due to compositional differences in the two maize meals as to the genetic modification and Cry1Ab content. The question of whether Bt-maize would change a hypersensitivity response in salmon was not resolved, since the juvenile fish were apparently tolerant to SBM inclusion in the diet. Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank Asbjrn Valset at Nofima’s research station at Sunndalsra, Norway for skilled animal care, Ellen K. Hage and Gunn C. stby in our lab in Oslo for excellent technical assistance, and Trond M. Kortner for assistance with additional reference gene qPCR work. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive therapy-resistant gastrointestinal malignancies. 12695532 Because of the often late diagnosis, surgery represents a curative option for only 20% of patients, but this does not preclude recidivism or metastasis. Novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches are urgently needed. Pancreatic cancer is associated with a prominent desmoplastic reaction of prognostic and diagnostic relevance. In a mouse model of PDAC, depletion of a rare population of the FAP+fibroblasts/pericytes has been found to be sufficient to induce IFNg/TNF-mediated hypoxic necrosis of cancer cells and stroma via vascular damage and alleviated local immunosuppression. Pericytes are mesenchymal cells seeding in the walls of newly formed blood vessels, playing a major role in angiogenesis, and representing one of the possible sources of the stroma-producing myofibroblasts in pancreatic cancer. They are marked by chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan 4, also known to decorate get 84573-16-0 immature precursors of epidermal, neural, and mesenchymal origin. Transmembrane CSPG4 functions as a high-affinity receptor for bFGF, PDGF-AA, alpha3beta1-integrin, galectin-3, and, most prominently, type VI collagen . The ligand-receptor interaction activates small GTPases; it can provide links to a number of cytoplasmic signaling pathways, enabling dynamic rearrangement of the actin cytoskeleton, altering cell-stratum interactions and promoting the process of migration. CSPG4 has also been found in certain tumor cells, and has been shown to promote their malignant behavior and to impact the progression of melanoma, glioblastoma, chondrosarcoma and leukemia. Therapeutic targeting of CSPG4 in melanoma and glioblastoma appears to yield anti-tumor effects. The extracellular portion of CSPG4 may undergo different post-translational modifications, or be shed, CSPG4 in Pancreatic Tumors assuming that autocrine proteolysis is not blocked by simultaneously produced COL6, which contains a Kunitz-type proteinase 
inhibitor sequence in the a3-chain. The presence of ectodomain in circulation, and its clinical relevance have not yet been evaluated. Although pro-stromal and promalignant, CSPG4 was not yet considered as a pathogenic factor or biomarker in pancreatic cancer; a stroma-rich aggressive malignancy. By studying the patients with non-neoplastic, benign and malignant pancreatic disorders, we sought to 17628524 determine whether different degrees of malignant or desmoplastic transformation modify patterns of CSPG4 expression in tissues or circulation, and whether it might bear diagnostic or pathogenic relevance. bri