Gastric Cancer Registry Charts Exponential Growth and New Discoveries
Over the past year, the Gastric Cancer Registry at Stanford University School of Medicine has charted meaningful growth, not only in the amount of patient data it has amassed, but also in the scientific discoveries it has enabled, reports the primary investigator Hanlee Ji, MD, Professor of Medicine at Stanford.
The Gastric Cancer Foundation launched the Gastric Cancer Registry in 2011, collecting medical information and biological samples from patients and close family members. The goal was to apply cutting-edge technologies to these samples, identifying genomic and molecular features that might shed light into how stomach cancers start, and reveal insights that would point to potential new treatments. The registry has since grown to include samples from nearly 900 participants.
Now the registry is gearing up for a major expansion that will encompass data from a larger number of Brazilian patients with stomach cancer. Through a collaboration between the Gastric Cancer Registry and Federal University of Pará, genomic data will be analyzed jointly by researchers from both institutions. The results will be available through the GCR Genome Explorer, a web portal launched in 2020 that researchers can use free-of-charge to enable their efforts to develop new gastric cancer treatments.
Ji is particularly enthusiastic about new technology that’s enhancing the analysis of gastric cancer samples in the registry. For example, in 2024, Ji’s team began using new, cutting-edge tools to generate spatial image data, which allowed them to map out new types of features in gastric cancers.
“The remarkable thing about this platform is you can actually see the molecular features of gastric cancer at the resolution of single cells and their distribution throughout a patient’s tumor,” Ji said. “It provides you with a visual high-resolution map of the cancer as it exists within the patient. It also tells you if there are immune cells that are fighting the cancer or other cell types that are fueling it. In the history of clinical development, we’ve never had access to this type of information. I believe this will enable us to really consider therapeutic development in a much more sophisticated way than was ever believed to be feasible before.”
Using data from the Gastric Cancer Registry, Ji’s team has published more than a half-dozen scientific publications. In 2023, Ji and other Stanford faculty members won a five-year, $9 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for a project centered around characterizing precancerous markers and cell types that may help identify people who face a high risk of gastric cancer. Research enabled by registry data was instrumental in helping secure that grant, Ji said.
Improving early detection of gastric cancer is one of Ji’s research goals – and one that he believes the Gastric Cancer Registry will be instrumental in supporting. “Once we really understand the science of how stomach cancer precursors develop, we can start to think about an approach to detecting the disease with a blood test,” he said.
Ji is grateful for the ongoing support of the Gastric Cancer Foundation.
“With this type of research, we need advocates who are in it for the long run to be able to get across the finish line,” he said. “The foundation’s support throughout the years is what has allowed the registry to continue to thrive.”
