[New prognostic factors in gastric cancer]

Gastric cancer is a rather common solid tumour world-wide. Although it has been made advances in the diagnosis and treatment, its prognosis has not improved significantly in recent years. Now, greater attention has been gained into the biological behaviour of gastric tumour cells, how they become malignant and what mechanisms are involved during the process of invasions and metastasis. This process involves the tumour-associated protease cascade, changes in genetics and loss or mutation of adhesion molecules. Such biological tumour characteristic features may provide new prognostic factors in gastric cancer and also potential target for future therapeutic concepts. This is an update of prognostic factors in gastric cancer, pointing out new functional biological features, some of which have been investigated by our group over the past few years.