November is Gastric Cancer Awareness Month

JOIN WITH THE AACR TO FIND BETTER WAYS TO PREVENT AND TREAT GASTRIC CANCER

Gastric cancer, also known as stomach cancer, is a disease in which cancer cells form in the lining of the stomach. The wall of the stomach is made up of five layers of tissue: the mucosa, submucosa, muscle layer, subserosa, and serosa. Stomach cancer typically begins in the cells lining the mucosal layer and spreads through the outer layers as it grows.

An estimated 30,300 new cases of stomach cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 10,780 people are expected to die from the disease in 2025, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Most stomach cancers—about 90% to 95%—are adenocarcinomas, cancers that form in mucus-secreting glands.

Stromal tumors of the stomach begin in supporting connective tissue and are treated differently from gastric cancer. 

Men are more commonly diagnosed with stomach cancer than women. Moreover, stomach cancer is less frequent among non-Hispanic whites than people of other races and ethnicities. Risk factors include smoking, age, diet, and long-term stomach inflammation, such as infection with Helicobacter pylori bacteria, according to the NCI.

One Person’s Story

Irasema Partida Chavez received a diagnosis of stomach cancer at the age of 34. After two surgeries, she has had no evidence of disease for eight years. Read her story in the AACR Cancer Disparities Progress Report 2024.

More on Gastric Cancer

While identifying and treating Heliobacter pylori has been a major focus of gastric cancer prevention, recent research has looked into other cancer-promoting bacteria that could offer a more reliable way to diagnose developing gastric cancer. Learn more on Cancer Research Catalyst, the AACR’s official blog.

In a phase III trial, the addition of the immunotherapy durvalumab (Imfinzi) to chemotherapy both before and after surgery led to more people with resectable gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma not experiencing cancer progression after two years. Learn more in Cancer Today.

What the AACR is Doing in The Area of Gastric Cancer

The AACR is active in supporting gastric cancer research. Grant-supported research projects and other AACR initiatives in gastric cancer research include:

• In 2024, Tae Hyun Hwang, PhD, founding director of the Molecular Artificial Intelligence Initiative at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, received an AACR Innovation and Discovery Grant for his research on “AI-driven spatial multimodal approaches to understand the tumor microenvironment in gastric cancer.”
• In 2023, Nicole B. Halmai, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Davis, received an AACR-Bristol Myers Squibb Cancer Disparities Research Fellowship. She is investigating “Genetic ancestry and DNA methylome in gastric cancer among Latinos.”
• In 2023, Eunyoung Choi, PhD, assistant professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and Brent Allen Hanks, MD, PhD, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, were recipients of an AACR-Debbie’s Dream Foundation Innovation and Discovery Grant. Choi is looking into fatty acid desaturation as a druggable target for gastric cancer, and Hanks is researching the NLRP3-HSP70 axis and immunotherapy resistance in gastric cancer.

for more information

Please see our page on stomach cancer for more information on this disease and its prevention, screening and treatment.