ObjectivesThe aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the adjuvant efficacy of dendritic cell (DC) vaccines against advanced colorectal cancer.MethodsCNKI, CBM, WanFang Data, VIP, PubMed, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library and EMbase were searched to identify studies on dendritic cell vaccine for CRC up to August 13rd, 2017. After independently screening the literature and extracting data, two researchers evaluated the risk of bias in the studies, and used RevMan 5.3.5 software for meta-analysis.ResultsA total of 10 studies involving 2 050 patients were included. Meta-analysis showed that cellular immunotherapy based on DC vaccine treatment can improve the 2-year and 3-year overall survival rate of patients with advanced colorectal cancer (HR=0.33, 95%CI 0.17 to 0.27; 0.26, 95%CI 0.12 to 0.56, P<0.05), while there was no statistically significant difference in 1-year overall survival rate (HR=0.48, 95%CI 0.19 to 1.20, P=0.12); DC-CIK-based cellular immunotherapy could improve 2-year and 3-year overall survival rates (HR=0.27, 95%CI 0.10 to 0.75; HR=0.15, 95%CI 0.04 to 0.54, P<0.05), the difference of 1-year overall survival rate was not statistically significant (HR=0.39, 95%CI 0.13 to 1.13, P=0.08); DC combined with chemotherapy could improve 2-year and 3-year overall survival (HR=0.24, 95%CI 0.10 to 0.56; HR=0.22, 95%CI 0.04 to 0.54, P<0.05); the difference of 1-year overall survival rate was not statistically significant (HR=0.34, 95%CI 0.06 to 2.03, P=0.24); median overall survival in the DC vaccine group (MSR=1.25, 95%CI 1.16 to 1.34, P<0.05) and median progression-free survival (MSR=1.39, 95%CI 1.25 to 1.53, P<0.05) were superior to the control group. Fever was the most common adverse reaction and most patients could be relieved after treatment.ConclusionsDendritic cells vaccines-based immunotherapy can effectively improve the later overall survival rate and prolong median OS of patients with advanced colorectal cancer with mild adverse reactions, however the improvement of short term survival rate is not obvious.