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CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gastrointestinal Cancers: Gastric and Esophageal Cancers
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1530387
This article is part of the Research Topic Primary and Secondary Chemotherapy Resistance in Gastrointestinal Tumors: Key Mechanisms and Ways to Overcome Resistance View all 3 articles
Tocilizumab improves the efficacy of anti-PD-1 in a patient with advanced gastroesophageal junction cancer: a case report
Provisionally accepted- 1 Department of Gastroenterology, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, China
- 2 Department of Oncology Chemotherapy, First Hospital, Peking University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
Background: Cancer-related inflammation contributes to the progression of malignancies and considerably affects therapeutic outcomes. IL-6 acts as a main mediator of both local and systemic inflammatory responses. Although IL-6 therapies have been successful in the treatment of inflammatory conditions, there has been little experience in patients with cancer.Case presentation: A 66-year-old man was diagnosed with gastroesophageal junction squamous cell carcinoma (stage IV) with liver metastasis. The patient presented with notable cancer-associated systemic inflammatory symptoms, and experienced disease progression after initial two cycles of anti-PD-1 combined with chemotherapy. After tocilizumab treatment, the symptoms improved rapidly. The patient showed favorable response to subsequent anti-PD-1 plus second-line chemotherapy, and survived without disease progression.Targeting IL-6 holds promise for the management of cancer-associated inflammation and improvement of therapeutic outcomes.
Keywords: Cancer-associated inflammation, Immune checkpoint inhibitor, IL-6, tocilizumab, chemotherapy
Received: 18 Nov 2024; Accepted: 07 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cai, Jin and Dai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yun Dai, Department of Gastroenterology, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, China
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