Esophageal cancer is the 8th most common tumor in the world, with 400,000 deaths due to esophageal cancer worldwide in 2012. 223,000 new cases of esophageal cancer occurred in China in 2012, accounting for 48.9% of the world’s cases. The pathological types of esophageal cancer include adenocarcinoma and squamous carcinoma; adenocarcinoma is the main pathological type in Europe and the United States, while esophageal cancer in China is mainly squamous carcinoma. At present, immunotherapy for esophageal cancer mainly consists of monoclonal antibody therapy, vaccine therapy and peripatetic cell therapy. I. Monoclonal antibody therapy Since there is an obvious correlation between overexpression of epidermal growth factor receptor and prognosis of esophageal cancer, monoclonal antibody therapy targeting epidermal growth factor receptor signaling pathway is gradually applied to the treatment of esophageal cancer. In previous and currently ongoing phase I or II clinical trials, cetuximab monoclonal antibody has been found to have some therapeutic effect on esophageal cancer. Tumor vaccine therapy There are relatively few studies on immunotherapy of esophageal cancer vaccine, which is still mainly in the phase I clinical trial stage. A phase I clinical study of a vaccine against HLA-A24-restricted epitope peptides: TTK, LY6K and IMP-3 for esophageal squamous carcinoma in Japan found that the median survival of patients with advanced, recurrent or distant metastatic esophageal cancer who failed conventional treatment was 6.6 months after vaccination. A further phase II clinical study found that the median survival after vaccination was 4.6 months for patients expressing HLA-A2402 and 2.6 months for patients not expressing HLA-A2402, and that progression-free survival was significantly longer in patients expressing HLA-A2402 than in those not expressing HLA-A2402. Vaccine therapy given to patients with esophageal cancer was found to enhance the immune function of patients, and the only phase II study also found that it could prolong the survival time of patients with advanced disease. After the local injection of interleukin 2 and tumor cell stimulation to the tumor site or metastasis site, 10% of the patients had complete remission of clinical symptoms, 18% had partial remission and 27% had stable disease. At present, the research on cytokine-induced killer cell therapy for mid- to late-stage esophageal cancer in China is mainly based on clinical observation. Wang Zhiyu et al. found that the objective remission rate of mid- to late-stage esophageal cancer after CIK cell therapy was 44.4%, and the clinical benefit rate was 80.6%. Chen Wenmin et al. treated patients with esophageal cancer with CIK therapy and found that progression-free survival could reach 20 months and partial remission rate could reach 66.7%. Moreover, patients’ subjective symptoms improved significantly after treatment, and pain symptoms were reduced and swallowing improved. At present, immunotherapy has been applied to the treatment of mid- to late-stage esophageal cancer in large numbers and has been proven to have certain clinical efficacy, but there is a lack of reports of phase III clinical studies, and further randomized controlled clinical studies with large samples can be conducted on the basis of the existing ones to promote and use this treatment more perfectly.