Recent studies have revealed that OLC1 might be linked to activation of both mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) signaling pathway [4, 5] Besides high expression in pulmonary pre-malignant lesions and the most common pathological types of lung carcinoma, OLC1 protein overexpression was detected in a range of human cancers, such as epithelial ovarian cancer, esophageal squamous cell cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer [6–9]. Here, IST1 is linked to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.