We thank members of the Bentires-Alj laboratory for advice and discussion. Tissue samples that correspond to PDX1, PDX2 and PDX4–PDX11 were provided by the Cooperative Human Tissue Network, which is funded by the National Cancer Institute. Other investigators may have received specimens from the same subjects. We thank A. L. Welm (University of Utah) for the PDX3 and PDX12–PDX16 models; H.-R. Hotz for offering the QuasR and edgeR tools in the FMI Galaxy server; and S. Bichet and P. Hirschmann for help with immunohistochemistry. We are grateful for the support of the FMI, DBM and Biozentrum core facilities. Research in the Bentires-Alj laboratory is supported by the Swiss Initiative for Systems Biology- SystemsX, the European Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, Novartis, the Krebsliga Beider Basel, the Swiss Cancer League, the Swiss Personalized Health Network (Swiss Personalized Oncology driver project) and the Department of Surgery of the University Hospital Basel.

Reviewer information

Nature thanks Melanie Flint and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.