Measuring Intragastric Tumor Markers in Gastric Cancer Patients: a Systematic Literature Review on Significance and Reliability

Abstract

As of 2017, no serum tumor marker has shown high levels of sensitivity or specificity for early detection, classification, staging, prediction and prognosis of patients affected by gastric cancer. In this regard, since 1975 several authors have investigated the gastric juice or gastric lavage of patients with gastric adenocarcinoma in order to determine the concentrations of intragastric tumor markers and discover the perfect antigen for this cancer. To date, however, a systematic review of the literature on intragastric tumor markers is still unreported. After a thorough search, we found important as well as unimportant findings and have come to clearly defined conclusions. We believe that describing the current state of knowledge achieved by the scientific community in this particular field of research could augment information on the complex pathobiology of gastric cancer and entail a deeper understanding of its unpredictable malignant behavior.

Quantitative Analysis of Differential Expression of HOX Genes in Multiple Cancers

“…In order to compare HOX gene expression patterns in cancer tissue with known cancer markers, we searched for prognostic markers that are known to undergo genetic alterations and protein level changes. We have compiled a list of 29 previously suggested prognostic markers genes for the 8 analyzed cancer types in which 11 or more (about a third) of the HOX genes were found to be differentially expressed ( Table S8 ) [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]. For each marker, we examined whether it is differentially expressed between healthy and tumor tissue and performed a Kaplan-Meier (KM) survival analysis.…”

Long Non-coding RNA ASNR Targeting miR-519e-5p Promotes Gastric Cancer Development by Regulating FGFR2

“…The early symptoms of most GC patients are not obvious, and diagnosis delay becomes the main obstacle of GC treatment and prognosis. The combination of gastroscopy and biopsy is the universally recognized gold standard for GC diagnosis (Virgilio et al, 2017;den Hollander et al, 2019). However, its application in GC screening is still limited because it is not easy to be accepted by patients due to the invasiveness and high cost.…”

Prognostic Role of Intragastric Cytopathology and Microbiota in Surgical Patients with Stomach Cancer

“…[ 5 6 ] Since the last decade, cytologic and molecular analysis of gastric lavage (GL) of GC patients has provided interesting results. [ 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ] Gastric bacterial microbiota (MB) represents another original issue for GC research drawing medical attention. [ 18 19 20 21 22 ] The stomach lumen, in fact, is not sterile and physiologically hosts a rich MB (approximately 10 2 –10 4 colony forming units per gram content) mainly composed of the genus Lactobacillus, Clostridium, Propionibacterium, Streptococcus , and Staphylococcus .…”