Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Jun;36(6):587-613.
doi: 10.14670/HH-18-309. Epub 2021 Feb 10.

Is there still a place for conventional histopathology in the age of molecular medicine? Laurén classification, inflammatory infiltration and other current topics in gastric cancer diagnosis and prognosis

Cristina Díaz Del Arco  1   2 , Luis Ortega Medina  2   3 , Lourdes Estrada Muñoz  4 , Soledad García Gómez de Las Heras  4 , Mª Jesús Fernández Aceñero  2   5
Affiliations
Review

Is there still a place for conventional histopathology in the age of molecular medicine? Laurén classification, inflammatory infiltration and other current topics in gastric cancer diagnosis and prognosis

Cristina Díaz Del Arco et al. Histol Histopathol. 2021 Jun.

Abstract

Gastric cancer (GC) is the fifth most common cancer and the third cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. In western countries, more than half of GC patients are diagnosed at advanced stages and 5-year survival rates range between 20-30%. The only curative treatment is surgery, and despite recent advances in oncological therapies, GC prognosis is still poor. The main prognostic tool for patient categorization and treatment selection is the TNM classification, but its limitations are being increasingly recognized. Early recurrences may occur in early-stage disease, and patients at the same stage show heterogeneous outcomes. Thus, there is a need to improve GC stratification and to identify new prognostic factors, which may allow us to select drug-susceptible populations, refine patient grouping for clinical trials and discover new therapeutic targets. Molecular classifications have been developed, but they have not been translated to the clinical practice. On the other hand, histological assessment is cheap and widely available, and it is still a mainstay in the era of molecular medicine. Furthermore, histological features are acquiring new roles as reflectors of the genotype-phenotype correlation, and their potential impact on patient management is currently being analyzed. The aim of this literature review is to provide a modern overview of the histological assessment of GC. In this study, we discuss recent topics on the histological diagnosis of GC, focusing on the current role of Laurén classification and the potential value of new histological features in GC, such as inflammatory infiltration and tumor budding.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Agnes A., Estrella J.S. and Badgwell B. (2017). The significance of a nineteenth century definition in the era of genomics: Linitis plastica. World J. Surg. Oncol. 15, 123. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ajani J.A., Rodriguez W., Bodoky G., Moiseyenko V., Lichinitser M., Gorbunova V., Vynnychenko I., Garin A., Lang I. and Falcon S. (2010). Multicenter phase III comparison of cisplatin/S-1 with cisplatin/infusional fluorouracil in advanced gastric or gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma study: The FLAGS trial. J. Clin. Oncol. 28, 1547-1553. - PubMed
    1. Anderson W.F., Camargo M.C., Fraumeni J.F., Correa P., Rosenberg P.S. and Rabkin C.S. (2010). Age-specific trends in incidence of noncardia gastric cancer in US adults. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 303, 1723-1728. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Anderson W.F., Rabkin C.S., Turner N., Fraumeni J.F., Rosenberg P.S. and Camargo M.C. (2018). The changing face of noncardia gastric cancer incidence among US non-Hispanic whites. J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 110, 608-615. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ang T.L. and Fock K.M. (2014). Clinical epidemiology of gastric cancer. Singapore Med. J. 55, 621-628. - PMC - PubMed

Grants and funding

LinkOut - more resources