Immunotherapy for Esophageal Cancer

As the third most common cancer of the gastrointestinal tract, esophageal cancer has a rather worse prognosis treated with current therapy strategies, and a poor 5-year survival rate lower than 15%. Recent years, emerging immunotherapy has showed a gratifying effect in treating other solid tumors which illuminates its usage for esophageal cancers. Immunotherapy for esophageal cancer basically includes adoptive-cell-therapy-based, antibody-based and vaccine-based therapies, and all of which have shown preliminary favorable results in treating esophageal cancer. However, due to the rather lower muta- tion rate and a tough microenvironment inside the cancer, promising immunotherapies like immune checkpoint blockade drugs, gene-modified-T cell therapies are hindered by the immunosuppressive factors from microenvironment. Future endeavors will be focus-ing on targeting immunosuppressive factors, combining immunotherapies with classical treatments to create a satisfying effect. Immunotherapy has a broad application prospect in the treatment of malignant tumors. The high frequency of esophageal cancer mutations and the effective results of immunotherapy highlighted in other gastrointestinal cancers provide strong evidence for the study of esophageal cancer immunotherapy. Treatment strategies combined with existing or new treatment modes will be the direction of future esophageal cancer treatment.