Gastric Cancer Registry Poised for Growth in 2026
Global collaborations, advanced technology and new outreach initiatives are propelling the growth of the Gastric Cancer Registry at Stanford University School of Medicine. The registry is positioned for continued expansion in 2026, predicts primary investigator Hanlee Ji, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford.
This has been a banner year for the registry and for its Genome Explorer portal, which provides researchers worldwide with free access to data generated from the registry. Accomplishments include:
- The registry has collected a total of more than 723 tissue samples from patients with gastric cancer, making it one of the largest organized repositories of gastric cancers in the world.
- The Genome Explorer now includes genomic data from 257 GCR tumors, as well as genomic datasets for 443 gastric tumors and 185 esophageal tumors from the Cancer Genome Atlas, making the GCR Genome Explorer one of the largest publicly accessible repositories of gastric cancer genomic data worldwide.
- The Genome Explorer supports more than 100 active users engaged in multidisciplinary gastric cancer research, 70% of whom are from academia.
The large increase in total patient accruals in the registry in 2025 reflects productive, ongoing collaborations with the Intermountain Healthcare in the United States, the Integra Cancer Institute in Guatemala, Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile, Nacional de Cancerologia and Universidad Autonoma de Manizales in Columbia and Federal University of Para in Brazil. In addition to receiving precancerous and cancerous tissue samples from those institutions, the registry received invaluable genomics data from 464 gastric cancer specimens originating in Brazil.
Ji’s team has adopted cutting edge new technologies that are enabling advanced methods such as single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics. The technologies are complementary and have the potential to drive valuable discoveries in gastric cancer, Ji said.
“One allows us to probe individual cells and the other gives us a detailed picture of the tumor microenvironment. The ability to look at individual cells but also gain information about how they’re organized within the tumor itself and the surrounding tissues is turning out to be very informative,” Ji said.
He added that the registry will be housing a data set of over 150 gastric cancer samples that have undergone single cell sequencing.
The samples housed in the registry are helping inform several ongoing studies that will continue in 2026. One is centered on comparing microbes found in the mouth to those in the guts of patients who have stomach lesions that are at high risk of becoming cancerous. Because the makeup of microbiomes is closely tied to diet, it’s possible the insights they gain could be used to develop dietary interventions to shield against gastric cancer, Ji said.
Ji and his colleagues are planning to increase the visibility of the Gastric Cancer Registry in 2026 by presenting data from studies it has enabled at scientific conferences. They include the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Gastrointestinal meeting in San Francisco in January and the American Association of Cancer Research Meeting (AACR), scheduled for April in San Diego.
Ji is encouraged by the growing international interest in the registry and Genome Explorer. Recently, for example, group of gastric cancer researchers from La Fundación para el Progreso de la Medicina in Argentina used the Explorer’s data to zero in on “translocations,” a genomic abnormality in which chromosomes break and then fuse to different chromosomes. Because these fusions have been linked to tumor development, gaining a better understanding of translocation could inspire new treatments for gastric cancer, Ji said.
As the Gastric Cancer Registry enters its 15th year, Ji remains grateful for the support provided by the Foundation and its donors.
“We originally intended for the registry to be a resource for research into new treatments and prevention strategies, and we’re starting to really see that kick up now,” Ji said. “We are building out an international reputation because of the support of the Gastric Cancer Foundation.”
