Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is a highly lethal malignancy with a 5-year survival rate of 7%1. It is expected that by 2020 PDA will surpass breast and colorectal cancer to become the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths2. Currently, there are no active screening methods to detect PDA at early stages, and patients with localized disease exhibit no overt symptoms. Thus, PDA is often diagnosed too late and the few available therapeutic options have little durable activity. In fact, if evidence of the disease is detected early, the only potentially curative option for pancreatic cancer is surgery, followed by adjuvant chemotherapy. Nevertheless, early recurrence and disease progression after surgery is evident in a large proportion of patients. Though the underlying cause(s) of recurrence or disease progression remain largely unknown, key culprits are undetected micrometastases and cellular drug resistance mechanisms.