Recent molecular analyses revealed that gastric cancers closely associate with alterations in several interesting genes, such as p53 (Tamura et al, 1991; Uchino et al, 1993), p21 (Czerniak et al, 1989), c-met (Kaji et al, 1996), TGF-β (Park et al, 1994; Nakamura et al, 1998), and β-catenin (Park et al, 1999). The gene discussed is TGFB1; the disease is gastric cancer.