Objective: To investigate the expression and action of long non-coding RNA XIST in pancreatic cancer tissue. Methods: The XIST expressions in specimens of 56 paired pancreatic cancer and adjacent normal pancreatic tissues as well as in normal human pancreatic duct epithelial cells (HPDE) and 7 different pancreatic cancer cell lines (sPC-3, BxPC-3, Capan-1, CFPAC-1, Hs766T, Panc-1 and SW1990) were examined by real-time quantitative PCR. The relations of XIST expression with the clinicopathologic factors of pancreatic cancer patients were analyzed; in pancreatic cancer cells with high XIST expression after interference by XIST siRNA, the viability and proliferation were detected by MTT and BrdU assay, and protein expressions of Ki-67 and PCNA were determined by Western blot analysis. Results: The XIST expression in pancreatic cancer tissue was significantly higher than that in adjacent normal pancreatic tissues (2.452 vs. 0.9729, P<0.001), and high XIST expression was significantly associated with tumor stage (P=0.016) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.032) of the patients. The XIST expression levels in all 7 types of pancreatic cell lines were significantly higher than that in HPDE cells (all P<0.05), in which, XIST expression level was about 2.5-fold higher in SW1990 cells than that in HPDE cells. In SW1990 cells after XIST siRNA interference for 48 h compared with untreated SW1990 cells, the viability (0.812 vs. 1.215) and proliferation ability (0.708 vs. 1.007) were significantly reduced, and protein expressions of Ki-67 ((0.467 vs. 1.027) ) and PCNA (0.600 vs. 0.997) were significantly down-regulated (all P<0.05). Conclusion: XIST expression is increased in pancreatic cancer tissue and its overexpression can promote the growth of pancreatic cancer cells, and the mechanism may be associated with its regulating Ki-67 and PCNA expressions.