High nuclear poly-(ADP-ribose)-polymerase expression is prognostic of improved survival in pancreatic cancer.

Poly-(ADP-ribose)-polymerases (PARPs) act as post-translational modifiers of proteins that are mainly involved in the DNA repair machinery, and have recently been shown to be predictive of pathologically complete remission after chemotherapy in breast cancer. In the pancreas, PARP expression has so far only been studied in inflammatory conditions. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the relevance of PARP in pancreatic cancer.