IBSP and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: The relationship between IBSP protein expression and the clinicopathological characteristics of ESCC patients was investigated, and the results showed that the upregulation of IBSP protein was significantly associated with lymph node metastasis (P = 0.017) and advanced clinical stage (P = 0.001; Table 1) regardless of sex, age, cell differentiation, and general classification.