In human gastric cancers it has been shown that promoter hypermethylation and hemizygous deletion of the RUNX3 gene correlated with a significant reduction in expression, and the tumorigenicity of cell lines in nude mice was inversely related to their level of RUNX3 expression, indicating that RUNX3 is a tumor suppressor involved in the development of gastric cancers [17]. Here, RUNX3 is linked to gastric cancer.