Immunotherapeutic Strategies for Gastric Carcinoma: A Review of Preclinical and Clinical Recent Development

Abstract

Gastric carcinoma (GC) is the 2nd most common cause of cancer-related death. Despite advances in conventional treatment and surgical interventions, a high percentage of GC patients still have poor survival. Recently, immunotherapy has become a promising approach to treat GC. Here, we present preclinical and clinical studies encouraging the use of vaccination, adoptive T-cell therapy (ACT), and immune checkpoint inhibitors, such as programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)/programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) or cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4). The ongoing immunotherapy clinical trials have shown promising results in safety and tolerability even in late-stage GC patients. Moreover, we highlight that the combination of ACT with chemotherapy could be the best choice to treat GC.