Inflammation and gastrointestinal cancer: an overview

Gastrointestinal cancers collectively rank as the most lethal cancers worldwide, and are strongly linked with chronic inflammation. Despite advances over the last decade into our understanding of the etiology of these malignancies, both from a host perspective and with respect to environmental factors, current treatment strategies comprising surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy are still associated with unacceptably poor patient survival rates. Accordingly, there is a pressing need to identify new molecular targets which can underpin the development of next-generation treatment strategies to improve patient outcomes, and serve as biomarkers for early disease detection. In this review we provide an updated discussion on the identity of such candidate molecules, with a focus on innate immune system regulators within the gastrointestinal mucosal epithelium which promote inflammation and tumorigenesis.