Research and Development of New Strategies for the Early Detection and Prevention of Gastric Cancer in the Spanish Population: EpiGASTRIC/EDGAR Project.

Gastric cancer (GC) is the fifth most common and the third more deadly cancer in the world. In Spain, the incidence is 7.8 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, being twice as frequent in men as in women. During 2020, 7.577 new cases were diagnosed and approximately 5201 deaths occurred (Spanish association against cancer, AECC). Most cases are diagnosed in an advanced stage with a 5-year survival rate lower than 30%, which highlights the great importance of an early diagnosis.

Thus, this study aims to evaluate clinical, endoscopic and molecular approaches to identify individuals with high-risk of GC.

Methods: Coordinate and prospective project that considers the gender dimension of population-based study within a collaborative network. It includes different but interrelated cohorts:

1. "EDGAR 1": symptomatic patients undergoing a diagnostic gastroscopy to study the prevalence of PGLs;
2. "EDGAR 2": PGLs and EGC with indication for endoscopic resection;
3. "EPIGASTRIC": patients diagnosed with GC;
4. CONTROLS: patients without gastric pathology or a familial history of GC, obtained from the cohort EDGAR1.

Although GC diagnosis has been characterized by endoscopy, there has been a strong demand for low or non-invasive methods of GC detection. In this sense, clinical information and biological samples obtained by less invasive methods will be collected prospectively from the participating centers. State-of-the-art high-definition endoscopy and multiomic techniques will be used to perform: