Mouse models of gastric preneoplasia and cancer, with a focus on pathology

Gastric cancer is the fifth most diagnosed cancer and the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, with limited options of targeted therapy available. Thus, a better understanding of key molecular events that contribute to gastric tumorigenesis would facilitate the development of novel therapies to prevent or treat gastric cancer. Extensive efforts have been made towards generating murine models that recapitulate the complex process of gastric cancer pathogenesis. There have been some challenges, however, in identifying and interpreting the results obtained by using these models. Namely, hyperplasias have often been misinterpreted as invasive cancer, and identifying cancer cells of origin has been complicated by nonspecific lineage-tracing studies. In this Review, we summarize the current models of gastric preneoplasia and cancer and discuss their limitations, especially with regard to correlating mouse and human pathology.