Efficacy of Adoptive Immune-cell Therapy in Patients with Advanced Gastric Cancer: A Retrospective Study

Conventional therapy for advanced gastric cancer (GC) has limited survival benefits. In this retrospective study, we aimed to investigate the efficacy of immune-cell therapy, using in vitro-activated T-lymphocytes with and without dendritic cells (DCs), in combination with standard therapies in terms of the survival of patients with advanced GC. A total of 242 patients who were diagnosed as having stage-IV GC were enrolled in this study to receive immune-cell therapy with or without standard therapies, such as chemotherapy, surgery, or radiation therapy. Overall survival was analyzed by the Kaplan-Meier with log-rank test and Cox regression methods. Immune-cell therapy increased median survival time (21.5 months) in patients with advanced GC. The patients who underwent surgery with or without chemotherapy as a prior treatment showed better prognosis than those who received other therapies (p