This evidence, together with genetic data showing that H. pylori synergizes with inherited mutations in HR repair genes in inducing gastric cancer (Usui et al, 2023) and experimental data showing that Lgr5+ cells serve as cells of origin of gastric cancer in the antrum (Li et al, 2016; Fatehullah et al, 2021) and the corpus of the stomach (Leushacke et al, 2017), makes it seem plausible that an expansion of the stem cell pool by H. pylori is an early and critical event in gastric carcinogenesis. This evidence concerns the gene LGR5 and gastric cancer.