Advances in Natural Killer Cells and Immunotherapy for Gastric Cancer

Gastric cancer is one of the common malignant tumors in the gastrointestinal tract, and the treatment of gastric cancer includes the main ways such as radical resection, adjuvant chemotherapy, palliative care, and drug therapy; however, patients often have defects such as high recurrence rate, high treatment burden, and serious side effects, which impose a heavy burden on the economic and social construction and patients’ families. In recent years, novel gastric cancer treatment methods featuring tumor immunotherapy have provided new treatment strategies to improve the above-mentioned defects and increase the cure rate of patients. Natural killer cells (NK cells) are key components of the body’s intrinsic immune response and can participate in both the intrinsic and adaptive immune responses, exercising the functions of tumor killing, removing pathogenic microorganisms or abnormal cells and enhancing immunity, and thus have broad prospects for new drug development and clinical treatment. This article reviews the biological properties and functions of NK cells and their interrelationship with gastric cancer treatment, and provides a reference for clinical research.