Interestingly, the present results showed that several long-chain acyl-carnitines (carnitines C14:0, C16:0, C16:0-OH, and C18:0) were obviously increased in ESCC tissues with a high ILF2 expression compared to the corresponding para-cancer tissues, whereas the levels of these metabolites showed no significant difference between ESCC tissues with a non-high expression of ILF2 and the para-cancer tissues. Here, ILF2 is linked to cancer.