Advances in esophageal cancer-specific tumor markers and immunotherapy

Abstract

Esophageal cancer has a high fatality rate among common cancers. There are no obvious symptoms in the early stage of esophageal cancer, leading to untimely diagnosis and disease progression. Therefore, finding the right tumor markers to improve diagnostic accuracy and enable early detection and treatment is particularly important to reduce mortality and improve quality of life for patients. Traditional treatments are surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, but the treatment effect is usually poor. Immunotherapy for oncology, represented by immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), has been on the rise in recent years and is beginning to take its place in the first, second and third lines of treatment for esophageal cancer. In this review, some more studied tumor markers including DNA methylation, expression of miRNA and lncRNA, exosomes, tumor microenvironment and circulating tumor cells are summarized, and some promising immunotherapies, some are corresponding with markers, are introduced, providing a reference for the diagnosis and treatment of esophageal cancer.