November 21, 2022 – Role of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors in Gastroesophageal Cancer Treatment Landscape

James M. Cleary, MD, Ph.D.: Immunotherapy has made a major impact in the treatment of gastroesophageal cancers. The place where it has probably made the biggest impact for the largest number of patients has been in the treatment of locally advanced esophageal and gastroesophageal junctional cancers. For the longest time, we treated patients with neoadjuvant chemoradiation followed by surgery. It always felt as if we should be doing something after surgery, but all the trials that looked at giving a certain therapy after surgery failed. We had a huge recurrence rate. We always felt as if we should be doing something, but there was no evidence to tell us what to do. This changed in a big way with the advent of adjuvant nivolumab.