DEPTOR and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: As summarized in Table 1, expression of DEPTOR in ESCC was negatively correlated with TNM stage (p = 0.0003) and lymph node metastasis (p = 0.010), while not related to other clinicopathological characteristics, such as age (p = 0.746), gender (p = 0.854) and histologic grade (p = 1.000, namely differentiation).