Disputed paternity: the uncertain ancestry of pancreatic ductal neoplasia.

In this issue of Cancer Cell, Kopp and colleagues report that pancreatic ductal cells are largely refractory to the induction of pancreatic neoplasia. Whereas a rare ductal subpopulation may still prove capable of neoplastic transformation, these findings refocus attention on acinar and other non-ductal cell types as initiators of this deadly neoplasm.