Pancreatic cancer has an insidious onset but rapid progress. Most patients are in advanced stage at the time of admission to the hospital. More than half of the patients still relapse early even after a radical resection, with an extremely low 5-year survival rate. Although systemic chemotherapy can improve the overall survival rate of pancreatic cancer patients, its efficacy is still worse than inpatients with other adenocarcinomas. Platinum compounds are the main agents for chemotherapy of pancreatic cancer, to which, resistance may arise in tumor cells with high expression of ERCC1, causing primary drug resistance of the tumor to the chemotherapy. Whether the sensitivity of the pancreatic cancer cells to platinum-based chemotherapy regimen can be predicted by determining the their ERCC1 expression levels, and whether their response to chemotherapy can be improved by regulating the ERCC1 expression may be the breakthrough for increasing the chemotherapy efficacy of pancreatic cancer. At present, the researches in this field are still in their infancy. Here, the authors briefly review the relevant research progress, so as to provide assistance for future studies.