ARTICLE jnci.oxfordjournals.org JNCI | Articles 793

Although incidence of gastric cancer has steadily declined in the Western countries over several decades, it is still the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide ( 1). The high mortality is mostly due to late diagnosis of the disease. The great majority of gastric malignancies are adenocarcinomas that can be divided into two histological entities, intestinal and diffuse type, which exhibit distinct epidemiological and genetic patterns ( 2, 3). Curative treatment of gastric cancer requires complete surgical removal of the neoplastic tissue, but even with curative intent, the 5-year survival is only about 20 % – 30 % ( 4). Therefore, new diag-nostic markers and treatment modalities are needed. Overexpression of c-Myc (MYC), as determined by immunohis-tochemistry, is associated with poor survival among gastric cancer patients ( 5, 6). However, the functional role of the MYC protein and the mechanism whereby its expression is regulated in gastric cancer