RESEARCH ARTICLE The prognostic value of E

lignancies in China, and squamous cell carcinoma is the of predictive tumour biomarkers. Jiang et al. BMC Cancer (2015) 15:377 DOI 10.1186/s12885-015-1393-8geal (Barrett’s) adenocarcinomas (EACs) frequently show2Department of Thorax Surgery, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, People’s Republic of Chinamain histological type [1, 2]. It generally has a poor prognosis because it is usually in an advanced stage at the time of diagnosis. Despite the progress in chemo-therapeutic, radiotherapeutic and surgical treatment, the five-year survival rate is still less than 20 % [3-6]. In re-cent years, molecular targeted therapy has become an important treatment [7-10]. With the aim of increasing One potential group of useful protein biomarkers is the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) family of receptors. This family contains four members, EGFR, ErbB2/human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2), ErbB3/HER3, and ErbB4/HER4, that act as re-ceptor tyrosine kinases and have a well-defined function in cell signaling, controlling cell proliferation and differ-entiation. Esophageal cancers frequently show EGFR or HER2 gene amplification and overexpression [11, 12]. And esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (ESCCs) pre-dominantly show alterations of EGFR, whereas esopha