Lgr5 expression is absent in human premalignant lesions of the stomach
- 1Cancer Science Institute Singapore, National University Health System & National University of Singapore, Singapore
- 2Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology, Queen's University, Belfast, UK
- Correspondence to Professor Manuel Salto-Tellez, CCRCB, Queen's University Belfast, 97 Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 7BL, UK; m.salto-tellez{at}qub.ac.uk
- Accepted 29 February 2012
- Published Online First 22 March 2012
- Lgr5
- Intestinal metaplasia
- dysplasia
- intestinal-type gastric cancer
- colonic adenomas
- gastrointestinal cancer
We read with great interest the paper by Nam et al 1 showing that leucine-rich repeat-containing G protein-coupled receptor 5 (Lgr5) transcriptionally active cells were not pluripotent progenitor cells in the gastric acid secreting mucosa and that spasmolytic polypeptide-expressing metaplasia was not derived from Lgr5-expressing cells. Here we would like to confirm the relevance of this observation in clinical specimens. Intestinal-type gastric carcinogenesis has been well documented in a stepwise histopathological model, known as Correa pathway, which includes chronic gastritis, intestinal metaplasia, dysplasia and invasive carcinoma.2 We performed Lgr5 immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining on full sections from gastric antral epithelium (n=10), which included intestinal metaplasia and …
