Patients with human resected pancreatic cancer

This cohort included 118 consecutive and unselected patients who underwent, between September 1998 and September 2010, curative intent surgery for PDA (Brussels Dataset). Archived tumor specimens were available for the entire study population. Exclusion criteria included: preoperative chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy (n=12), macroscopically incomplete resection (R2) (n=6), or tumor histology other than ductal adenocarcinoma (n=19). We also excluded patients who died of postoperative complications within 30 days following surgery (n=1) because they are non-informative for this kind of translational study. Of the available samples, gene mRNA expression data was produced from 118 samples. All samples were re-evaluated to ensure tumour was present in the specimen. RNA was extracted from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) primary tumour tissue.