GAST and gastric carcinoma: During the late seventies and early eighties, it became evident that the gastric hormone gastrin stimulated the enterochromaffin-like (ECL) cell to proliferation and neoplasia in rodents and humans (2–5), and before the identification of the ECL cell, Azzopardi and Pollock (6) focused on argentaffin (neuroendocrine cell marker) cells in gastric carcinomas.