Review of recent molecular landscape knowledge of gastric cancer

Abstract

Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers worldwide and its prognosis remains dismal. One reason for poor outcomes of GC patients is that most are diagnosed when the cancer has already advanced. Novel biomarkers with high sensitivity and specificity are needed to diagnose GC in the early stage. In addition, to improve the outcome of patients with GC, patient stratification according to prognostic factors and sensitivity to chemo(radio)therapy are necessary. Appropriate followup criteria and individualized treatment will contribute to improvement in prognosis. Over the past decades, development of microarray and sequencing technology have coalesced to increase reports regarding epigenetic alterations that affect the character of malignancies including GC. These advances help our understanding of gastric carcinogenesis and have the possibility of improving the prognosis of GC by contributing to the optimization of therapeutic strategies. Further development of biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis are desperately needed. Here, we enumerate and describe some GC-related molecules reported over the past few years that may be useful biomarkers.