Radiotherapy modulates autophagy to reshape the tumor immune microenvironment to enhance anti-tumor immunity in esophageal cancer

The combination of radiotherapy and immunotherapy exerts synergistic antitumor in a range of human cancers, and also in esophageal cancer. Radiotherapy-induced tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) reprogramming is an essential basis for the synergistic antitumor between radiotherapy and immunotherapy. Radiotherapy can induce autophagy in tumor cells and immune cells of TIME, and autophagy activation is involved in the modification of immunological characteristics of TIME. The TIME landscape of esophageal cancer, especially ESCC, can be affected by radiotherapy or autophagy regulation. In this review, we depicted that local radiotherapy-induced autophagy could promote the maturation, migration, infiltration, and function of immune cells by complicated mechanisms to make TIME from immune “cold” to “hot”, resulting in the synergistic antitumor of RT and IO. We argue that unraveling the relevance of radiotherapy-initiated autophagy to driving radiotherapy reprogramming TIME will open new ideas to explore new targets or more efficiently multimodal therapeutic interventions in ESCC.