Summary Urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) is a serine proteinase that has been suggested to play an important role in cancer invasion and metastasis. It binds to a specific membrane receptor denominated uPA receptor (uPAR Pancreatic cancer has one of the poorest prognoses of all gastrointestinal malignancies, being the fourth or fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Western industrialized countries (Bomman et al, 1994). Gudjonsson (1987), in his classical review of 37 000 patients with pancreatic cancer, demonstrated an overall survival rate of 0.4% and a median survival time of 5 months after the diagnosis was established. Once pancreatic cancer is clinically evident, it progresses at a rapid rate, and metastasis has usually occurred at the time of diagnosis. Consequently, many patients are not resectable at presentation, and the overall resection rate is often less than 30% (Gudjonsson 1987;Bomman et al, 1994). The mechanisms that regulate this aggressive growth behaviour in pancreatic cancer are not at all clear. Recently, it has been shown in pancreatic cancer that the concomitant overexpression of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor and its ligands EGF-, TGF-alpha (Korc et al, 1992;Yamanaka et al, 1993a) and/or amphiregulin (Ebert et al, 1994a; Yokoyama et al., 1995a) is associated with shorter post-operative survival following tumour resection. In addition, enhanced expression of c-erbB-3 (Friess et al, 1995), TGF-fs and basic fibroblast growth