Therapeutic approaches for esophageal cancer include conventional treatments, such as surgical removal and chemoradiation treatment as well as gene therapy strategies, such as the introduction of the tumor suppressor p16/INK4A (20), expression of IL-2, IL-6 and GM-CSF gene products (21,22), and the transduction of the herpes simplex virus-thymidine kinase gene (23,24). The gene discussed is IL6; the disease is esophageal cancer.