Bridging the Gap between Diseases of the Stomach and Lower Esophagus

In this issue of Cancer Discovery, Nowicki-Osuch and colleagues perform an extensive characterization and analysis of single-cell RNA-sequencing data of the tubal gastrointestinal system, including a spectrum of inflammatory conditions and intestinal metaplasia of the stomach and esophagus. They show that both gastric and esophageal intestinal metaplasia share similarities at the transcript and protein levels. Interestingly, they show that individual cells within areas of metaplasia can coexpress transcriptional programs of both gastric and intestinal epithelia. See related article by Nowicki-Osuch et al., 1346 (6).