Gastric cancer and flow cytometry: the beginning of a promising match

Gastric cancer (GC) is still a diffuse and aggressive disease in many countries where its frequency has not drastically decreased as in the USA. Furthermore, except in Japan and few other countries where the health care system has implemented effective strategies to diagnose the disease very early, GC therapy is unsatisfactory because of the advanced stage at which it is disclosed. Recent advances in the understanding of GC, resulting from identification of Helicobacter pylori as a critical factor in its development, seem not to have changed the situation. Studies on GC have often adopted flow-cytometry to investigate many parameters mostly related to prognosis. Unfortunately, the results obtained with this important technique have been disappointing and diverse, which has caused a fair amount of skepticism as to its role. Starting from a critical review of the vast Literature on the topic, this paper discusses a re-evaluation of the role of flow-cytometry in the fight against GC.