S100A8 and cancer: The cancer-promoting activity of H. pylori is due to expression of bacterial proteins that induce a pathogenic inflammatory response; of these, the cytotoxin-associated A (cagA) gene has been most studied, and cagA+ strains of H. pylori are much more cancer-promoting than cagA− strains (Kuipers et al. 1995; Peek and Crabtree 2006), based on roles of cagA in reprogramming cancer-associated processes, including cell cycle, cell motility, epithelial–mesenchymal transition, and others (Backert and Blaser 2016).