Gastric cancer (GC) is the third primary cause of
cancer-related mortality and one of the most common type of malignant diseases worldwide. Despite remarkable progress in multimodality
therapy, advanced GC with high aggressiveness always ends in treatment failure. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) has been widely recognized to be a key process associating with GC evolution, during which
cancer cells go through phenotypic variations and acquire the capability of migration and invasion. Wnt/β-
catenin pathway has established itself as an EMT regulative signaling due to its maintenance of epithelial integrity as well as tight adherens junctions while mutations of its components will lead to GC initiation and diffusion. The
E-cadherin/β-
catenin complex plays an important role in stabilizing β-
catenin at cell membrane while disruption of this compound gives rise to nuclear translocation of β-
catenin, which accounts for upregulation of EMT
biomarkers and unfavorable prognosis. Additionally, several
microRNAs positively or negatively modify EMT by reciprocally acting with certain target genes of Wnt/β-
catenin pathway in GC. Thus, this review centers on the strong associations between Wnt/β-
catenin pathway and
microRNAs during alteration of EMT in GC, which may induce advantageous therapeutic strategies for human
gastric cancer.