Gastric Cancer Therapy

Definition

Gastric cancer (GC) is a cancer that arises from the lining of the stomach. More than 95 % of this heterogeneous disease is adenocarcinoma that can be subdivided into two main histological subtypes: intestinal and diffuse, based on Lauren classification.

Characteristics

While the intestinal type of gastric cancer is often related to environmental factors such as Helicobacter pylori infection, diet, and lifestyle, etiology of the diffuse type is more elusive although there is association with genetic abnormalities such as CDH1 mutation in a small population of patients. Furthermore, there is little evidence in the literature that correlates different molecular aberrations among these two disease subtypes, thus diminishing the usefulness of this classification in the prediction of targeted therapy. Therefore, gastric cancer therapy/treatment is still largely dependent on clinical staging of the disease, i.e., early or advance stage.

Therapy of Early Stage Gastric Cancer

Early...