Results (Table 1 ) of qPCR analysis using frozen primary pancreatic tissue specimens demonstrated that full-length CEA transcript was detected in normal human pancreatic tissues (3 of 4). Among diseased tissue, the full length transcript was found frequently in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (12 of 13) and less frequently in benign adenomas (1 of 2) and in pancreatic endocrine tumors (3 of 5), although the total number of specimens representing the latter two categories were small. Transcripts of the CEA splice variant were not detected in normal pancreatic tissues (0 of 4), benign adenomas (0 of 2) nor in endocrine tumors (0 of 5), and were rarely detected in pancreatic adenocarcinomas (1 of 13). Expression of the CEA splice variant transcript in the single positive adenocarcinoma specimen was concordant with full-length CEA transcript expression (Table S1) .