Wan JY, Zhang D, Wu XH, Yang H, Dong C. Progress of immune checkpoint inhibitors in gastric cancer. World J Gastrointest Oncol 2025; 17(8): 109613 [DOI: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i8.109613]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Chao Dong, Research Fellow, MRCP, Department of Hemodialysis, The Affiliated Tai’an City Central Hospital of Qingdao University, No. 29 Long Tan Road, Tai’an 271000, Shandong Province, China. dongchao689@163.com
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Aug 15, 2025; 17(8): 109613 Published online Aug 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i8.109613
Progress of immune checkpoint inhibitors in gastric cancer
Ji-Yun Wan, Duo Zhang, Xiang-Hua Wu, Hao Yang, Chao Dong
Ji-Yun Wan, Duo Zhang, Hao Yang, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, The Affiliated Tai’an City Central Hospital of Qingdao University, Tai’an 271000, Shandong Province, China
Ji-Yun Wan, Xiang-Hua Wu, Department of Gastrointestinal Gland Surgery, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Enhanced Recovery After Surgery for Gastrointestinal Cancer, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China.
Chao Dong, Department of Hemodialysis, The Affiliated Tai’an City Central Hospital of Qingdao University, Tai’an 271000, Shandong Province, China
Author contributions: Wan JY was responsible for conceptualization, methodology, software, investigation, formal analysis, and writing original draft; Zhang D was responsible for visualization and investigation; Wu XH was responsible for resources, supervision, software, validation, visualization, writing review and editing; Yang H was responsible for methodology, software, visualization, and investigation; Dong C was responsible for conceptualization, funding acquisition, resources, supervision, writing review and editing; all of the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript to be published.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Chao Dong, Research Fellow, MRCP, Department of Hemodialysis, The Affiliated Tai’an City Central Hospital of Qingdao University, No. 29 Long Tan Road, Tai’an 271000, Shandong Province, China. dongchao689@163.com
Received: May 19, 2025 Revised: June 10, 2025 Accepted: July 4, 2025 Published online: August 15, 2025 Processing time: 89 Days and 15.9 Hours
Abstract
Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the most common malignant tumors globally. The screening rate of GC is low, and the early symptoms are not obvious, which affects early diagnosis, and most patients have a poor prognosis. Various treatments are available for GC, mainly surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Immunotherapy has made significant progress in recent years, especially for unresectable and metastatic GC. Immune checkpoints are proteins which can regulate the congenital and adaptive immunity, and are mainly expressed on immune cells. Immune checkpoints are crucial molecules that regulate the immune system, maintaining immune balance through positive or negative modulation. Tumors exploit negative immune checkpoint molecules to suppress immune responses, thereby evading immune surveillance. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) can undo this inhibition, reactivating immune cells to destroy tumor cells. The prospects for the treatment of GC with ICIs are promising, but it also faces many difficulties and challenges. This minireview summarizes the progress of immune ICIs in GC, discusses current individualized strategies, and explores future development directions.
Core Tip: Gastric cancer (GC) is a serious threat to human health. Immunotherapy is one of the important ways of clinical treatment of GC. Among them, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been applied in clinical practice, and the research on the combination therapy of ICIs has shown good therapeutic effect and lower treatment toxicity. This minireview summarizes the progress of immune ICIs in GC, discusses current individualized strategies, and explores future development directions.
