Because gastric adenocarcinomas can arise through an intestinalization process [30], and considering the evidence that ITLN-1 is expressed in colonic goblet cells [24], we hypothesize that ITLN-1 may be aberrantly expressed in human gastric cancer and involved in the carcinogenic events associated with gastrointestinal malignancies. Here, ITLN1 is linked to gastric adenocarcinoma.