Esophageal carcinoma is one of the most common malignant tumors in the world, with incidence and mortality rankings of 7th and 6th, respectively. In recent years, immunotherapy represented by immune checkpoint inhibitors of programmed death-1 and programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) has been introduced into clinical practice and has changed the treatment status of esophageal cancer. Although immunotherapy has provided long-term survival benefits for patients with advanced esophageal cancer and high pathological response rates in the neoadjuvant therapy, only a few of the patients have satisfactory therapeutic outcomes. Therefore, effective biomarkers for predicting immunotherapeutic effects are urgently needed to identify those patients who could benefit from immunotherapy. In this paper, we mainly discuss recent research advances of biomarkers related to the immunotherapy of esophageal cancer and the clinical application prospects of these biomarkers.
食管癌是世界范围内常见的恶性肿瘤之一，发病率和死亡率分别居第7位和第6位。近年来，以程序性死亡-1及程序性死亡配体1（PD-L1）等免疫检查点抑制剂为代表的免疫治疗不断进入临床实践，改变了食管癌的治疗现状。尽管免疫治疗已经为晚期食管癌患者带来长期的生存获益，并在新辅助治疗人群中显示出较高的病理缓解率，但仅有少部分患者治疗效果理想。因此亟需有效的生物标志物预测其临床疗效，以更好地识别免疫治疗获益人群。本文对近年发现的食管癌免疫治疗相关的生物标记物及其研究进展进行综述，并重点讨论这些标志物的临床应用前景。.