BACKGROUND AND AIMS Despite some recent advances, gastric cancer remains an important cause of death at world level. This indicates an absence of therapeutic options, stemming from the limited understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in carcinogenesis. Nearly fifty years ago Lauren classified gastric cancers, according to the morphological aspect, as intestinal or diffuse. The phenoty...

In the present study, we report an association between gastric cancer and polymorphisms in NFKB1 (rs28362941 and rs78696119). We employed the PCR-SSCP method to detect gene polymorphisms in 479 gastric cancer cases and 880 controls. The rs28362941 del/del homozygote was significantly associated with gastric cancer development; in particular it was closely associated with diffuse type gastric ca...

AIM To evaluate the methylation status of CDH1, FHIT, MTAP and PLAGL1 promoters and the association of these findings with clinico-pathological characteristics. METHODS Methylation-specific PCR (MSP) assay was performed in 13 nonneoplastic gastric adenocarcinoma, 30 intestinal-type gastric adenocarcinoma and 35 diffuse-type gastric adenocarcinoma samples from individuals in Northern Brazil. S...

objective her-2/neu gene is overexpressed in diverse human cancers and studies suggest a role of its product – p185 protein – in tumor progression by specifically promoting the invasive capacity of tumor cells. our aim was to evaluate her-2/neu content in resectable gastric cancer in this geographical region and assess the relationship between p185 expression and clinicopathologic tumor paramet...

Gastric cancer is the forth most frequent malignancy and the second most common cause of cancer death worldwide. DNA methylation is the most studied epigenetic alteration, occurring through a methyl radical addition to the cytosine base adjacent to guanine. Many tumor genes are inactivated by DNA methylation in gastric cancer. We evaluated the DNA methylation status of ANAPC1, CDKN2A and TP53 b...

Gastric cancer still represents a major cause of death worldwide mostly due to late diagnosis [1]. Moreover, given an aging and increasing global population, the number of cases is expected to increase during the next decade even as incidence declines [2]. For the intestinal subtype of gastric cancer according to Lauren’s classification, together with Helicobacter pylori eradication and diet ch...

Mucosal atrophy of the gastric antrum (type B atrophic gastritis) is generally accepted as predisposing to the development of the intestinal type of gastric cancer. Since bombesin stimulates gastrin release selectively from the antral mucosa, the response can be used as a marker for antral mucosal atrophy. In this study we have investigated bombesin-stimulated plasma gastrin responses in 21 pat...

Angiogenesis is essential for tumor growth and metastasis and depends on the production of angiogenic factors by host and/or tumor cells. The role of angiogenesis and angiogenic factor expression in intestinal- and diffuse-type gastric cancer are undefined. Archival specimens of 51 intestinal-type and 38 diffuse-type human gastric carcinomas were examined for tumor vessel counts, angiogenic fac...

Aim: To investigate the correlation between Rap1 GTPase-activating protein (Rap1GAP) expression and clinicopathological outcome in patients with gastric cancer. Methods: A total of 219 patients with gastric cancer who were underwent surgery were enrolled in this study. The expression of Rap1GAP, MMP9, MMP2 and E-cadherin was examined by immunohistochemistry. The data of Rap1GAP expression, clin...