Abstract

Recent progress in gene technology has clarified the existence of some cancer-rejection genes and peptides such as MAGE, MART, etc. Many clinical trials with cancer vaccines have been performed. Since the clinical efficacy of HLA class I-restricted peptide vaccines is still poor, many researchers are mainly administering dendritic cell therapies. However, there have been few clinicals trials of cancer-specific immunotherapy for esophageal carcinomas. We have performed cancer vaccine therapy with SART-1 peptide and locoregional adoptive immunotherapy with activated autologous lymphocytes for patients with advanced esophageal carcinoma in a phase I and a phase I/II trial, respectively. The clinical responses were poor in the vaccine trial because of the rapid growth of esophageal cancers and the requirement for more than 2 months to activate and increase killer T cells after in vivo vaccination, while locoregional adoptive immunotherapy was effective for the treatment of esophageal cancers even in advanced stages with organ metastases. Based on these results, we think that a combination immunotherapy with adoptive immunotherapy and vaccine therapy is needed for the treatment of advanced esophageal carcinomas.