TP53 and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the most common histological subtype of esophageal cancer in South-Eastern and Central Asia, particularly in China.9 Large-scale genome sequencing of ESCC has identified known frequently mutated genes, such as TP53, and other previously unrecognized mutated genes,10, 11, 12 but intratumor heterogeneity in ESCC has not been well studied.