New targets in gastric cancer

Gastric cancer (GC) is the fifth most common malignancy and the third leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Since the effectiveness of current therapeutic options for the treatment of advanced (inoperable locally advanced, recurrent, or metastatic) disease is limited the need for novel effective treatment options is obvious. During last 2 decades, molecular-targeted therapy emerged as a new promising treatment modality and showed pronounced success in many tumor types. But in GC the only targeted agent approved until recently was trastuzumab for human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER) 2-positive advanced disease. Recently ramucirumab has emerged as new treatment option for second-line therapy of advanced GC. Clinical research data on novel targeted drugs hold promise for further improvement in GC patients’ outcomes. Currently the most studied targets in GC are HER family receptors, vascular endothelial growth factor proangiogenic pathway, and PI3K/Akt/mTOR axis. Also hepatocyte growth factor/mesenchymal epithelial transition factor, fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) pathways and some other promising targets have emerged recently. This review is focused at the current progress in clinical research of targeted drugs for GC with the accent on recent studies and future perspectives.