Background

Esophageal cancer is among the ten most common can-cers worldwide and the sixth most common cause of death from cancer [1,2]. The patients with this malig-nancy have extremely poor prognosis owing to insidious symptomatology, late clinical presentation and rapid progression [3]. Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the major histological subtype of esophageal cancer, being the second most common cancer among males and the fourth most common cancer among fe-males in India [4]. Despite advances in multimodality therapy, due to late stage of diagnosis and poor efficacy of treatment, the average 5-year survival rate for ESCC patients is about 30 % globally [5-7]. Development of bet-ter preventive and diagnostic approaches as well as more effective treatment modalities requires an in-depth un-derstanding of molecular mechanisms implicated in th