Abstract: Gastric cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in the world. Patients with gastric cancer are often treated by surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy or immunotherapy, but the clinical efficacy and prognosis are poor. As an important member of ADAMs family, a disintegrin and metalloprotease 17 (ADAM17) is significantly more highly expressed in gastric cancer than in adjacent tissues. It participates in the occurrence and development of gastric cancer by mediating EGFR, TNF-α, TGF-β/Smad, Notch and Wnt, FoxM1-ADAM17 and EGFR/ERK/SP1. The high expression of ADAM17 is also closely related to the poor prognosis of gastric cancer, suggesting that ADAM17 can be used as a biological index to predict the development and prognosis of gastric cancer and has great potential to become a new therapeutic target for gastric cancer. In this paper, the mechanism, treatment and prognosis of ADAM17 in the development of gastric cancer are reviewed, in order to provide new ideas for clinical diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer.