Gastric Cancer in the Precision Medicine Era: Diagnosis and Therapy

Gastric cancer is an aggressive disease that represents a serious problem andhas a daunting impact on global health. Despite an appreciable decrease in incidence over the last several decades, gastric cancer remains one of the most common types of cancer in the world. In recent years, a great progress has been made in understanding the pathogenesis of gastric cancer, especially regarding the importance of Helicobacter pylori and its associated inflammatory response. Furthermore, for early and advanced gastric cancers, appropriate treatments have been implemented to maximize curative results, as in the setting of adjuvant oncologic therapies of proven benefit for advanced cases, in addition to surgery. Our purpose through this book is to provide a general overview of the different aspects of gastric cancer. The first part aims to clarify the main aspects of tumorigenesis, such as the role of inflammation linked to the presence of H. pylori infection, and the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms so far known. The second part includes the pathological and clinical features and contains information regarding the most recent tissue and serological biomarkers in these neoplasms.The three successive parts are intended to provide he “state of art” of multimodal treatment approaches to gastric cancer, i.e., standard and novel surgical aspects, common and innovative chemo and radio protocols, and modern targeted therapies. Novel molecular classifications are under consideration to improvediagnostic and prognostic definitions and to prospect future treatments based on the use of immunotherapies and innovative molecules such as noncoding RNA and nanoparticles