Colonization of the stomach by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori can cause gastric cancer by secreting the CagA oncoprotein. Now, a Japanese laboratory has discovered that CagA disrupted Wnt/PCP signaling and altered the polarity in which the squamous cells of the developing gastric epithelium are arranged, causing the hyperproliferation of the stem cells.
Helicobacter pylori infection and germline genetic variants interacted with each other to affect the risk of gastric cancer in a study comparing more than 11,000 patients with stomach cancer and 44,000 people without cancer. Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) published those findings in the March 30, 2023, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
A Japanese study has found that the Helicobacter pylori oncoprotein, CagA, elicited transient 'BRCAness', inducing genomic instability via DNA double-strand breaks and defective homologous recombination. The effects may underlie the gastric carcinogenesis associated with chronic H. pylori infection.
