Adbelimumab Combined With Chemotherapy and Apatinib in Patients With Resectable Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Esophageal cancer is a prevalent digestive tract tumor, with around 400,000 new cases and 300,000 deaths globally each year. In the past few decades, surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and other treatments were continuously improved, however, the mortality of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients was not significantly decreased. For patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer, direct surgery is not effective. It is difficult to achieve radical resection by surgery merely, and even if many patients receive surgery, they may eventually have tumor recurrence and poor survival rate. Therefore, it is necessary to explore effective perioperative neoadjuvant treatment to reduce the risk of postoperative recurrence and improve the postoperative survival rate of patients. According to the reports, the expression of PD-L1 in esophageal cancer was about 41.4%. Therefore, PD-1/ PD-L1 immunocheckpoint inhibitor may become a new method for the treatment of ESCC. Preliminary clinical results showed that immunotherapy combined with chemoradiotherapy provided a synergies antitumor effect. The results of the Phase 1b trial evaluating adbelimumab monotherapy as a neoadjuvant treatment for locally advanced resectable ESCC demonstrated that patients receiving two cycles of neoadjuvant sequential surgery exhibited favorable safety profiles, with no adverse reactions of grade 3 or higher. The trial reported a major pathological response (MPR) rate of 24%, a pathological complete response (pCR) rate of 8%, a 2-year overall survival (OS) rate of 92%, and a 2-year recurrence-free survival (RFS) rate of 100%. The effectiveness of combining adbelizumab with chemotherapy and targeted therapy for locally advanced esophageal cancer is uncertain. This study aims to assess the efficacy and safety of using adbelizumab with chemotherapy and apatinib as neoadjuvant therapy for resectable ESCC.