Recently, several studies were published describing the association between HIWI (the human ortholog of PIWI) expression and diverse group of cancers including pancreatic [79] and gastric [80] adenocarcinomas, sarcomas [81], hepatocellular carcinomas [82], colorectal cancer [83], gliomas [84] and esophageal squamous cell carcinomas [85]. Here, PIWIL1 is linked to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.