Chemoprevention of epithelial cancers has increasingly been recognized as a promising intervention to control cancer. Among the most common epithelial cancers, gastric cancer seems to be an attractive target for preventive interventions. Promises for the potential effectiveness of preventive intervention arises a recent chemoprevention trial [1] but the results are inconclusive and previous efforts with -carotene in the prevention of gastric cancer [2] or lung cancer [3], and of green tea for gastric cancer [4] were unsuccessful.

We might design effective interventions to disrupt such a progression to invasive cancer by understanding the mechanisms of initiation and progression of gastric carcinogenesis and identifying the factors which influence and drive this process. It is likely that such a strongly causation-based prevention strategy may meet the expectations for an effective substantial reduction of cancer incidence.

Here, we discuss whether the background of chemoprevention allows hopes for the realization of the goal to combat gastric cancer.

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